


One more time

by ExplainingTheIndescribable



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-19 10:17:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 43,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22176013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExplainingTheIndescribable/pseuds/ExplainingTheIndescribable
Summary: AUPeggy and Angie keeping making sacrifices to keep each other safe, but the point of sacrifice is supposed to be to achieve something great, not to lose something as precious as the love of your life for no damn reason.Or, Howard invents a time-travelling device and everything goes to hell in a handbasket for our bi spy and lesbian thespian.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli
Comments: 12
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

Peggy knew that meeting Howard at the L&L was a mistake as soon as he entered, but Jarvis had mentioned it and Howard had made his mind up before she found out he knew it existed.

“I see why you come here so often.”

He grinned as he slid into the booth seat opposite Peggy and obviously checked out the wait staff.

She sighed and spoke pointedly, “nice to see you too, Howard.”

After a few moments when he made no move to begin the conversation, Peggy said, “so? What’s so important you wanted to meet me after work?”

“Oh, it’s nothing really. I just wanted to see this place.”

“You wanted to see… the Automat. That’s it?”

“Yep,” he leaned back in his seat. “Well, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“What? I can’t miss you?”

Peggy took a breath, “Howard, it’s been a long day. Are you going to get to the point anytime soon?”

“Okay fine, all work and no pleasure,” he grumbled, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “See, I’ve invented this new technology, and you’re really the only person I trust with it. After that whole incident with my vault getting broken into… I just can’t risk it.”

“What is it?”

Howard shifted his gaze to the waitress who had just arrived at the table, “well hello gorgeous.”

Angie looked at Peggy, “he doesn’t seem like your type?”

Peggy smiled at Angie, “he’s not. Angie, this is Howard, an old friend. Please feel free to ignore him, I often do.”

Angie laughed and Peggy’s smile grew at the sound. They both ignored Howard’s, ‘hey’ of protest.

“Anything I can getcha?”

“A cup of tea please?”

“I’ve got the Earl Grey in special.” Angie winked at her and made a note on her pad before turning to Howard.

“Anything for you?”

Howard looked between Peggy and Angie, “a cup of coffee and-“ he was about to ask for her phone number, when Peggy kicked him swiftly under the table.

“-ouch. That’s all, thanks sweetheart.” He grimaced and rubbed his shin, knowing it wasn’t hard enough to bruise but still trying to make Peggy feel guilty for ruining his game.

Angie gave Peggy a look before walking away and going to get their drinks.

“She’s pretty.”

“Hands off.”

“I meant for you.” Howard grinned as Peggy scoffed, trying to stop her cheeks from turning pink.

“Don’t be absurd.”

“That look she just gave you, that whole exchange? You better be careful handling something that hot.” He winked.

She ignored him and where this was going completely. “You were saying something about a new invention?”

In a manner quite unlike his usual demeanour, Howard turned serious in a moment, “ah yes, that. I need you to look after it.”

“What does it do?”

“I- I don’t want to lie to you Peg-”

“Then don’t.”

“But I can’t tell you.”

Peggy looked at Howard, exasperated.

“I’m not looking after a mystery invention for you, without knowing exactly what it is. You do remember how that ended up last time?”

Howard winced, remembering Peggy punching him in the face for lying about Steve’s blood.

“Okay- it’s uh-” he shuffled in his seat, before leaning over the table a little, “remember how we… lost him?”

They both knew he was talking about Steve and it almost caught Peggy off guard. She sat up a little straighter.

“It was his choice, Howard.”

Howard mumbled something incoherent, “before you ask, no, I haven’t spoken to anyone professional about it yet but that’s not the point. I found a way to fix it.”

Peggy looked at him in disbelief, with a thread of hope tugging at her heart despite her intellect’s rejection of the possibility. Hope could only lead to hurt.

At that moment, Angie came back and placed their drinks in front of them. It took Peggy a moment long than usual to look up and thank her as she left the table, before Peggy turned her gaze back to Howard.

He looked so hopeful.

When she spoke, her voice was somewhat strained; “how?”

“I might’ve figured out time travel... Now, we could get him back Peggy. We could do any of a million things to change that day, and get him back. And that was why I invented it. And I know we shouldn’t use it for probably countless reasons, but if I have it, one day I’ll use it Peggy, damn the consequences if we could bring him home. And so I need you to take it, and I need you to hide it from everyone, including me. Because you’re the only person I trust with it, and the only person I know I couldn’t convince to give it back to me.”

After the bombshell Howard had dropped, and the brief conversation that followed, Peggy was still reeling a little. And Howard has decided that this was a good time to tease her about making a move on Angie. Howard insisted on walking with her home to the Griffith and continued through the lobby, much to Peggy’s chagrin; although, it was more the current topic of conversation being a sensitive issue rather than his company, which she did actually enjoy upon occasion.

“It’s obvious she likes you.”

“Which is why you were about to ask for her phone number?” She knew him too well.

“Look Pegs, all I’m saying is, it’s not like she’d go for me anyway,” his winked at her like he knew a secret and it irritated Peggy, “it’s obvious she’s only got eyes for you.” Peggy rolled her eyes at him and started climbing the stairs to her floor without hesitation.

“Goodbye Howard.”

She ignored Howard’s huff of pretend annoyance at not being invited in, despite knowing Miriam’s rules, and at the notion that Angie was interested in her like that. She liked Angie, to the point of being perhaps a little too overzealous in protecting her from asshole customers. But she also knew that friends like her were hard to come by, and romance just made everything so much more complicated. It was better for both of them this way.

The more she said it, the more she almost convinced herself it was true.

~~~~

_Three weeks later_

_Peggy unlocked the door of the house she now shared with Angie, to find her standing in the hallway, looking like she was on her way into the kitchen. Without a word, Peggy shut the front door behind her and surged forward, kissing Angie with one hand tangled in her hair and the other resting on her waist. She pushed Angie up against the wall as Angie deepened the kiss, grabbing the lapels of Peggy’s coat and pulling her closer, before deciding the coat had to go and pushing it off Peggy’s shoulders. She shrugged it off and it dropped to the floor, in an instant Peggy’s hands were on her again, fingers tracing over her waist and down her skirt, pulling it up just a little. Angie took the opportunity to scratch down Peggy’s back, making her moan into the kiss and arch into Angie._

_In one swift move Angie flipped their positions and pinned her to the wall with her thigh pressed between Peggy’s legs. She began to undo the buttons on her shirt as Peggy ran her hand through Angie’s hair, kissing along her jaw line and down her neck, sucking little hickeys which had Angie’s knees buckling. With Peggy’s shirt finally open, Angie broke away from Peggy and met her gaze with dark eyes.“Take me upstairs, now.”_

_Without hesitation Peggy picked her up and Angie wrapped her legs around Peggy’s waist. Between heated kisses and pulling off clothing along the way, they just made it to their bedroom. Peggy lay Angie gently down on the bed before crawling on top of her, leaving a trail of kisses in her wake from her stomach to her lips, stealing one kiss and then another before-_

Her alarm went off. Peggy jerked awake and instinctively hit the button on top which would stop it’s insistent buzzing. It took her half a second to realise it was just a dream, and another half a second to realise that she was very disappointed by that fact. She put her hands over her eyes to block out the early morning light peeking through the curtains, trying to fight the urge to go back to sleep and finish things.

~~~~~~~

_A week later_

Peggy was at the L&L and still smiling as Angie walked away to pour her a cup of tea. _Get a grip, Carter_. Peggy cleared her throat and refocused on the book in front of her. She managed three sentences before there was a loud clatter which drew her attention to the source of the noise, she looked up just in time to see Angie picking up a fallen box of sugar packets and then reaching up on her tiptoes to place it back up on a high shelf. Except Peggy’s gaze had unintentionally flicked down to Angie’s skirt, which was riding up in a way Peggy vividly remembered dreaming about recently. Except in that situation she had been lifting Angie’s skirt.

Angie turned around a moment later to find Peggy staring intently at her book, “you okay, English? You’re looking a little flushed.”

_Fuck._

“Yes, I think maybe I’m just coming down with something. On second thoughts, don’t worry about the tea. I should be heading back.”

Angie noticed a lot of little things other people tended to miss. Like how right now, Peggy was very much avoiding looking her in the eye as she packed her book away and left Angie a tip.

“Uh, alright English, well if you’re sure…”

“Quite sure, yes, thank you Angie. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Bye…” Angie said to no one in particular as Peggy was already pushing through the revolving door out of the Automat. Well that was strange, even for Peggy. Maybe she should investigate?

~~~~

Daisy stepped off the cloaked helicarrier and looked around at the darkness, but didn’t find what she was expecting. The most startling thing was how short all of the buildings were and how dimly lit it seemed to be; this was most definitely not the New York she knew. Phil Coulson took a step off behind her and looked around, “so I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

He turned around and walked back into the helicarrier, picking up a few assorted gadgets from the selection in the holding area, before returning to Daisy and tapping his watch a few times. Coulson’s car Lola rolled down the gangway of it, before it closed behind them.

He got in the car and pushed the passenger side door open for Daisy. “Off to see the wizard? Or at least find out where we are and how we got here?” He was taking this a lot more in his stride that Daisy, who was trying to figure out where the other half of the Manhattan skyline was.

“Yeah, that’s starting to sound good right about now.”

~~~

As soon as the car levitated down to the ground in a non-descript alleyway, Phil noticed a clue, something was off about the road ahead; there were vintage cars everywhere, but Daisy spoke first, “are we- we can’t be. What am I saying, there’s no such thing as can’t anymore. How are we in the past right now?”

Coulson’s brow furrowed as he tapped a few buttons and glanced around to make sure to alley was deserted, before changing Lola’s appearance to look more like the vintage-looking Fords driving past in a steady stream on the street ahead.

“I’m not sure, but I don’t like it.”

“You’re not interested in the adventure? Or how the helicarrier apparently travelled through time totally randomly, or maybe even to a whole other universe?” Daisy looked at him sceptically. “Not to mention all the old cars,” she muttered.

“Well, yes, but don’t you think it’s a little suspicious? Besides, when has adventure coming looking for us ever ended well?”

Daisy tilted her head, “eh, I see your point.”

“And Lola’s a classic.” He rubbed the steering wheel with his thumb and started to drive them out of the alley.

Daisy held her hands up, “hey, I’m not saying anything.”

There was silence for a moment as they drove forward, pulled into the traffic on the main road and started to actually take in the fact that this place was a whole lot different to what they were used to, and not quite what they had been prepared for – and they had been really prepared for this mission, for once. It was only supposed to be a quick device delivery trip.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Daisy. “If we need to get home, and we need to figure out what’s happening, we’re going to need to get some answers, right. But how do we know who we can trust?”

Phil paused and considered, “add that to the ever-growing list of things we’ve got to figure out.”

~~~~

_The next day_

Peggy had noticed someone following her on her way home from work about a block back, someone who clearly wasn’t expecting her to be waiting around a corner to punch them in an alley, judging from the swearing coming from the potential enemy who was holding her bleeding nose.

Daisy tilted her head back, “okay, Peggy Carter just punched me in the face. Phil, you’re up.”

That piqued Peggy’s interest enough to stay her fight instincts, for now.

Phil stepped out from behind her with his hands raised, “they do say never meet your heroes.”

Peggy looked between them, they didn’t exactly looked like enemy agents, but she had developed trust issues since Dottie Underwood – the idiom never judge a book by its cover had been really hammered home; especially when she was being followed by two people who clearly knew more about her than she did about them.

“Who are you?”

Daisy, still tilting her head back and attempting to wipe away the blood with a tissue she’d pulled from somewhere, looked at her, “would you believe us if we told you?”

Peggy considered this briefly, “well you were just following me. I think that warrants some kind of explanation.”

Phil replied, “I’m sorry about that. You see, we’re a little out of our comfort zone and didn’t know who we could trust. Or if you are truly the right Peggy Carter.”

Although it was unlikely someone had replaced Peggy Carter, or it was someone wearing a face changing mask in the 1940s, they were currently living through a pretty unlikely situation, so all bets were off. But standing in front of her now, there was little doubt in his mind and this was definitely the highlight of his day.

Peggy looked at them, “what’s going on?”

“Well, we were hoping you could help us. I’m Phil Coulson, big fan by the way-”

Daisy looked at him, “really? You wanna do that now?”

“-and this is Daisy Johnson.”

“It’s a long story, but we’re happy to tell you what we can. Perhaps we could go somewhere busy, where it’s difficult to be overheard?”

“And please, god, somewhere with food. I’m starving.”

Peggy looked between them; she had been discretely studying their body language and everything else she could learn from their appearance as they spoke. And now she was torn, between wanting to help people who were clearly in trouble, and wanting to avoid falling for a trap.

Phil took the pause as a precursor to a no and decided to give it one last ditch attempt.

“I know you have no reason to trust us, but is there anything we could do to convince you? Just to have a coffee and hear us out. And then we’ll walk away, if that’s what you want.”

Peggy took a second before responding. “What’s my middle name?”

Well that was unexpected. Phil looked to Daisy with a dumbfounded expression, and Daisy shrugged back, “you’re the one with the collectible cards.” She had a point.

Phil sighed, “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“One coffee.”

“What?”

“Well, if you are enemy spies, and you don’t know something as innocuous and easy to find out about your target as their middle name…”

 _Then you’re probably not that much of a threat_ ; she kept that last part to herself. If she ever trained agents, she would make sure they were better equipped than this.

Peggy started walking down the alley towards the street, planning to go to a coffee shop as far away from Angie and the L&L as possible.

“Well? Are you coming?”

“Right, yeah-“

Daisy and Coulson both caught up to Peggy and walked with her down the street. Although Daisy still somewhat begrudged having her nose broken by Peggy Carter, Phil was secretly loving how in their one conversation so far, Peggy had somehow exceeded all of his expectations. He was already figuring out if she would sign his collectible card of her – a chance he never dreamed he would have, and it had him giddier than he would care to admit.

~~~~

After the second meeting in as many days which had left her questioning more than a philosopher making an ethical decision, Peggy was looking forward to grabbing food on the way home and doing nothing for the rest of the day; except she first had to shake the person who had been following her; another day, another alleyway confrontation apparently. She sighed. 

As the figure crept almost silently around the alley corner after Peggy, they found an empty dead end. Whirling around, they turned back only to find Peggy facing them, leaning against the wall nonchalantly and blocking the only entrance to the alley.

“Did you know that this is the second time I’ve been followed today?”

“What happened the first?” There was no point pretending to wear a disguise now.

Angie pulled off the scarf wrapped around her hair and the sunglasses which did nothing to hide her identity from Peggy.

“That’s… a long story.”

“Well, I got time.”

Angie folded her arms across her chest, imitating the way her mother did it, which always made her feel like she was a kid in trouble again. It appeared to have almost the same effect on Peggy, because instead of the brush offs she was getting increasingly used to and annoyed at, Peggy hesitated.

Angie stepped forward, “look, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But would you at least tell me you’re not in trouble?”

Peggy took a chance and closed the distance between them, taking Angie’s hands and holding them close to her chest. “I’m not in trouble. I just need to-“

Peggy cut herself off and Angie was suddenly wishing more than ever that she could read her mind or _something_ , just to make this easier.

“Need to what, English?”

Peggy had forgotten how she felt being so close to Angie, how soft her hands were and how she smelt like flowers and home; more than a week of actively avoiding her had done that. And she wasn’t any happier for it, and neither was Angie by the look of it.

“English?”

Angie looked at her so softly it shattered Peggy’s walls into a thousand fragments. It felt like they were in their own little bubble and the only thing that mattered was that they were there, right now, together.

“Angie…”

Peggy couldn’t tear her gaze away from Angie, let alone keep putting any kind of distance between them. Not kissing her right now was hard enough and as she let her eyes flick down to Angie’s lips for a fraction of a moment, she felt Angie shuffle slightly closer to her. Later, Peggy wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint exactly what made her do what she did next, but it was without a doubt the moment everything changed.

Peggy slowly inched forward, giving Angie plenty of opportunity to back away. But she didn’t. In fact, Angie took about 0.2 seconds to think o _h my god oh my god Peggy’s going to kiss me,_ and before she could change her own mind, she leant forward and met Peggy’s lips with her own.


	2. Chapter 2

_A few days later_

Peggy wasn’t used to being nervous. But she was nervous now, standing in the foyer of one of Howard’s mansions and waiting for Angie’s reply. In fact, every time she had been nervous recently, it had been because of Angie... She stopped that train of thought abruptly.

Angie didn’t even try to stifle her grin and replied with a squeal, “I would love to.” She tilted her head as a sly smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth and she spoke nonchalantly, “though I gotta say, English. I didn’t have you down as the moving in together on the first date type,” Angie quickly danced away from Peggy’s nudge with a cheeky grin.

“This isn’t like that!” She said indignantly.

“Okay, English. I believe you,” she kissed Peggy’s cheek; pink and flustered was her new favourite look on Peggy, “millions wouldn’t.”

Peggy looked at her pointedly, “do you know, I think I’ve just changed my mind about having a housemate after all. Yes, I think I would much rather just live alone.”

Angie simply grinned and stepped in front of Peggy, putting her arms around her neck. “Is that so?”

“Mhm,” Peggy looked over her shoulder pretending to find something in the distance very interesting, and that her heart wasn’t racing at Angie’s close proximity and the intoxicating smell of her perfume that came with it.

“Maybe I could change it back?” Angie’s tone dropped, and she started pressing little kisses along Peggy’s neck. She shivered involuntarily and Angie leaned back, grinning in delight, “I’ll have to remember that for later.”

Peggy distracted Angie with a kiss on the lips.

The rush of fireworks in her chest when they kissed never seemed to fade.

Angie moved in within the next two weeks or so between shifts and auditions, which Peggy helped her with when she could as Angie had managed to fit a surprising amount of stuff into her small room at the Griffith, and it required a few trips to move, with additional assistance from Jarvis driving one of Howard’s cars to and fro.

During the next two months, Angie and Peggy found a harmony between their schedules, often spending evenings together where they could. They talked and kissed and took things slow; there was no rush, they thought they had all the time in the world.

Little rituals developed with time, like Peggy carrying Angie up to her room when she fell asleep on the sofa waiting for Peggy to come home, and Angie leaving little notes for Peggy on the bathroom mirror. They spent their days off together going around town or staying in exchanging favourite books on quiet afternoons. Peggy ran lines with Angie and Angie helped patched Peggy up when she got ‘classified’ injuries. And between a hundred of these little moments, Peggy realised that she was in love.

~~~~

On the other side of town in the helicarrier, Daisy and Coulson were locked in a disagreement they both didn’t want to lose. It was the same argument they’d been having on and off for two months, and it always boiled down to the same initial points.

“But think how many people we could help! There’s nothing for people to be scared of if they think things have always been like that.”

Coulson looked at her. They both knew what he was going to say, but he said it anyway. “No, this is not a good idea. Releasing this into the environment right now would drastically change the future. We would have no idea what we’d be going back to. It just isn’t work the risk.”

Daisy pretended to think about it and sighed deeply. “I guess. But think of all the people we could help? And with the memory changer thingy, it would as if meta-humans had always existed. There would be so much less prejudice.” Daisy’s passion shone through her eyes, and as much as Phil hated being a stickler for the rules sometimes, at times like this there wasn’t really an option not too. It would be far too dangerous. And he knew Daisy knew that too.

“We can still do just as much good, if we set it off when we go back to our time. The memory changer will still work then.” He didn’t mention that the original plan had not actually been to set off the device, just to deliver it to a secure Shield storage facility – which didn’t sit right with him. Why would Hand task his team with taking care of this device, when she knew it would make more sense to use it and stop prejudice against meta-humans?

Daisy interrupted his train of thought.

“Ugh. Okay, fine.”

Daisy took it from the table and placed it carefully on one of the shelves lining the room and left. But not for long; it had been long enough already. It was time to do something.

Once Phil was asleep, she crept out. People deserved to know who they were, meta-humans deserved to know if they had powers, and no one deserved suffer other people’s bigotry. She paused and glanced at the door, there was no way she could get into trouble for something he wouldn’t remember, right? She realised then how much faith she was putting in the memory changer of a device that had come with more mystery than factual information. Before she could talk herself out of it, she unlocked the top and depressed the button inside, releasing an other-wordly chemical compound into the atmosphere.

Within a few hours, Daisy had returned to her quarters frustrated, thinking that it hadn’t worked. She had no way of knowing that it had done exactly what it was supposed to do, or that the device had nothing at all to do with helping meta-humans after all.

~~~~

“We need to do something, Howard. It’s been months at an impasse and now this. Who knows how much damage they’ve caused by setting off that device...” She pinched the bridge of her nose. Phil’s midnight call had told her what Daisy had done and although she was glad of the information, it brought stress she would have been lighter without. “We need to double check they’re from the future.” Howard tried to interrupt her, but she held a hand up. The headache forming behind her temples had drastically reduced her interest in continuing this conversation further. “Look, I understand your hesitation to use the time travel device. But I’ll come with you and we’ll be going forward, not back. We just need to do a test run first, gather enough information to question them, confirm they’re really from the future and if they’re telling the truth, get them back to their own time.” She unthinkingly rubbed at her ankle, where unbeknownst to Peggy, a tattoo was starting to appear.

Howard put his hands in his pockets and debated saying something, but decided not to argue. As per usual, and much to his ego’s annoyance, Peggy was right.

~~~~

As soon as Peggy came through the door that night, Angie felt like something was off. She turned on the sofa she was curled up and waited for her to come through to the living room. Peggy looked like death warmed up and Angie’s immediate instinct was to offer her food, but she figured Peggy would rather relax quietly for a while. The stress was oozing off her and it was a little bit of an unofficial routine they had gotten into when their work schedules allowed now that they lived together, just sitting in the living room, enjoying each other’s company after work.

“You okay?”

Peggy gave her a faint smile, but a warm one. “It’s been a long evening,” she came over and sat next to Angie, “but it’s better now that I’m here with you.” She kissed Angie on the cheek and Angie scooted closer to her, resting her head in her hand with her arm on the back of the sofa. She still couldn’t believe quite how lucky she was to be living with the wonderful woman in front of her, and not just because of the ridiculous number of phones in the house.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“I would much rather hear all about your day, darling. How did your audition go?”

And although the sense of melancholy that hid just under the surface of Peggy’s smiles that evening didn’t go away completely, by the third funny audition story Angie had told her, it was most definitely fainter.

There was a lull as Angie got up to get a new bottle of schnapps from what she had affectionately dubbed the Tasting Cupboard. Upon her return she noticed Peggy looking at her intently as she returned to the sofa.

“Angie.”

“English,” her tone was playful.

“How much have you had to drink?” She asked it lightly, knowing that she herself had probably had a couple more than she should have considering what an important day tomorrow was.

Angie lifted the glass in front of her, “maybe four drinks? I wasn’t really keeping count. Why?” she dragged out the ‘y’ playfully.

“So you’re still relatively sober?” Angie nodded. “And capable of making good decisions?”

“Ooh, what are we deciding?”

Peggy took a second to appreciate the way Angie’s eyes sparkled in the soft lamp light, before moving slightly closer to her. She took Angie’s glass from her hand and placed it on the coffee table in front of the sofa, before fixing Angie with an unreadable look.

“Hopefully, something good.” Peggy spoke softly, glancing down at Angie’s lips for a moment, before meeting her gaze again and leaning in ever so slightly closer.

Peggy cupped Angie’s cheek, before kissing her gently. She leaned back after a moment, giving Angie space for a moment; but it didn’t last much longer than a moment. Angie surged forward and kissed Peggy hard, pushing her back onto the sofa in a move which honestly surprised Peggy, but not enough to stop her returning Angie’s kisses over and over again. In an instant, Peggy’s hands were on Angie’s waist, sliding under her top and keeping her close; until kissing wasn’t enough anymore. Two months of stopping before things went further had built up more than enough tension. Peggy broke away from the kiss and held Angie as she sat up, sliding her hands under Angie’s thighs and holding her securely as she rose from the sofa and started carrying Angie upstairs, trying not to trip between kisses that still made her head spin.

~~~~

Peggy knew it was selfish. Spending the night with Angie before leaving was probably the most selfish thing she’d ever done, but somehow that hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind last night. This morning however, was another story. Since she’d woken with the first rays of light peeking through the window, the guilt had lain heavy on her chest like a stubborn fat cat she couldn’t shift. It stayed with her while she dressed, creeping silently around the two squeaky floorboards; but her mind had been made up since before she’d gotten home yesterday; though her resolve had flickered at the sight of the tattoo which adorned Angie’s ankle; it was a puzzle piece that matched her own perfectly. She knew intellectually that the marks had only started appearing yesterday after Daisy set off the device, but the memory changer had done it’s job and it was a strange thought that things hadn’t always been this way. But it also changed things. The people she cared for the most often wound up casualties of her profession, and knowing that anyone could accidentally see their marks and literally put two and two together, put Angie in a whole lot of danger.

A clean break, it was what they both needed. She told herself that over and over as she packed a bag, and over again as she forced herself not to linger any longer at Angie’s sleeping side. She left the bedroom and walked down the stairs, out of the front door and out of Angie’s life. She repeated it like a mantra until the words lost all meaning and the only thought in her mind was the image of Angie sleeping, peacefully lost in her dreams and now, by Peggy’s own design, lost to her as well.

A figure in the shadows of the trees along the road watched Peggy leave, before she disappeared around a corner on the winding path towards town. As soon as Peggy was out of sight, the woman walked brazenly up to the front of the building, pulled a key from her jacket pocket, and unlocked the door.

~~~~

“You do realise there are alternatives, Peg?”

Peggy looked at him, “such as?”

“I don’t know, change your tattoos, cover them up, we could even go back in time and stop them from using the damn device... something less drastic than just _leaving_ her.”

“You’re a fine one to talk.”

Howard tilted his head, “true.” He paused for just a moment. “But I’ve never been in love.” He sipped his coffee and avoided her glower as they planned their reconnaissance trip to the future.

“A clean break is better for everyone involved. Now, shall we?”

Howard knew a dismissal when he heard one and decided not to push it; just like he recognised one of his truest friends making a colossal mistake for stupid reasons; if anyone could keep their loved ones safe and be a kickass intelligence agent, it was Peggy. He just knew it, even if she didn’t.

~~~~

_A few hours later_

Angie awoke to find a cup of sweet-smelling tea on the nightstand by her side of the bed, still gently steaming. She rolled over to find Peggy sitting in next to her with a book open on her lap, and kissed her on the cheek gratefully.

“Thanks for the tea, English.” She picked up the mug and took a small sip; she could get used to all of this.

“Of course, darling. I would have made breakfast, but I didn’t know when you were going to be up.”

Angie glanced at the clock on the wall, “oh, I didn’t realise how late it was! You could’ve woken me you know.”

Peggy placed a piece of paper into the book to keep her place, put the book down on the table beside her and shrugged, “I didn’t want to wake you, your snoring’s very cute.”

Angie nudged her indignantly, “I do not snore!”

Peggy looked at her with a grin, “darling. I can confirm that you do.” Angie exhaled in a huff. “But only softly.” She leaned down and kissed Angie on the forehead, before sliding down under the covers and facing Angie with her elbow on her pillow and her head propped up by her hand, a teasing smile playing on her lips.

Oh yeah, Angie could definitely get used to this.

“Hang on, it’s almost 11, why aren’t you at work?”

“I took the day off.”

To say Angie was in shock would be an understatement of massive proportions.

“You… you can do that?”

Peggy laughed at the look on Angie’s face.

“I mean _you_ , Peggy, who practically lives at the phone company, like it’s life or death, spends most days and even sometimes half the night there, you took a day off?” Angie said incredulously. She spoke in a whisper, “do they even let you do that?”

Peggy simply grinned back with a twinkle in her eye. “I can take a day off once in a while; heaven knows I’ve accrued enough leave.”

Angie simply looked at her, and Peggy gazed back, still smiling, until all of a sudden her features turned a little more serious and her gaze flicked between Angie’s eyes.

“You really do have the most beautiful, expressive eyes.” She spoke like she’d almost forgotten what Angie looked like since last night.

Angie felt her cheeks flush a little, “…thanks, English. But don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the subject. ”

“I don’t know what you mean, but I’m going to make breakfast.” She kissed Angie on the cheek, before thinking twice and kissing her on the lips too. And suddenly Angie didn’t remember why she cared that Peggy was distracting her. Angie cradled Peggy’s cheek and pulled her back in for another kiss. When they finally broke apart, Peggy gave Angie an Eskimo kiss which made her smile, before pulling back the covers and rising, slipping her dressing gown on and tying it loosely at her waist. She reached the door before she turned back to Angie, “seeing as we both have the day off, perhaps you can think of something we could do today?”

Even before having watched Peggy leave with a little extra sway in her hips, Angie could think of a few things she’d like to do.. She allowed herself to snuggle into the warmth of Peggy’s bed for a moment to close her eyes and revel; today was already an amazing day and it wasn’t even noon yet.

As she lay in the warmth, there was a slight worry that niggled at the back of her mind with the thought that it really wasn’t like Peggy to take a day off work, but she dismissed it. There was no point worrying until there was something to worry about, and Peggy choosing to spend a day with her over work? That was unexpected, sure, but seemed like more of a cause for celebration than stress. Yes, everything was just fine by her.

But if she had been able to see the amount of radiation the woman making her breakfast had recently been exposed to and understood the context of it, she might have come to a different conclusion.


	3. Chapter 3

Whilst someone was in Peggy and Angie’s house reading a book and waiting for Angie to wake up, Peggy had called the number Coulson had given her at the end of their first meeting, and arranged to meet him and Daisy at the same café bright and early that morning. She got there a few minutes ahead of schedule, as she waited she recalled their first meeting two months ago.

_Peggy listened intently as Coulson told an abridged version of how they were actually from the future and weren’t quite sure how they had ended up in 1946, helped by added details, courtesy of Daisy. Neither mentioned the alien tech they currently had on board, or the fact that Peggy was going to co-found the very intelligence agency they worked for, in just a few years._

_Peggy studied them all the while for signs that they were lying. Nothing seemed to be a straightforward lie, but she got the sense they weren’t telling her everything, either; and that was a red flag, but somewhat understandable if they really were from the future._

_When Coulson had finished, Peggy took a sip of her coffee and said, rather nonchalantly, “did Howard put you up to this?”_

_“Howard? As in Howard Stark?”_

_Daisy grinned, “Like, Papa Iron Man? Oh, we’ve gotta meet him. Tony’s gonna…”_

_She trailed off as Coulson nudged her elbow just slightly at the mention of Iron Man, who wouldn’t exist for a few decades still._

_Peggy looked between them with a raised eyebrow, “Iron Man?”_

_Phil shrugged, “spoilers, but to answer your question, no. Howard Stark didn’t send us.” He looked at Daisy thoughtfully, “not that we know of anyway. But then, we don’t really know how we came to be here, so I suppose it’s possible.”_

_Peggy considered her meeting with Howard recently, when he told her about his time manipulating device. And then being stalked by these two today, who apparently needed a time travel device to get home. Now that was too much of a coincidence for her, but maybe just bonkers enough to be the truth?_

She’d told them she would be in touch, exchanged contact numbers just in case, and now here they were.

She was broken from her reverie as Daisy and Phil arrived and sat opposite her in the booth. The first thing Coulson did was start to apologise for Daisy setting off the device, like she was a child. Peggy waved them off, it was already done and there was no use crying over split milk.

“So,” Coulson spoke tentatively, “does this meeting mean you’ll help us?”

“I might be able to, but first in order to verify you’re from the future, I would like you to tell me a few things. Nothing important, or that would change the course of history,” she emphasised her point with her hands as she spoke, “just small details. Like what’s the tallest building in New York, who won the last big soccer championship here, things like that.”

This seemed amenable enough to Coulson, verifying a person’s story when it seemed as outlandish as theirs is also something he would’ve done before making any promises. “Well, uh the tallest building is the One World Trade Centre, but I’m not much of one for sports…” He looked to Daisy.

“The USWNT won the Fifa Women’s World Cup,” she supplied without missing a beat, “last year.” She realised they were in 1946, “I mean, in 2019.”

Peggy nodded, making notes. Pleasantly surprised that there was a women’s world cup to win; maybe the future really was brighter.

“And just one last detail? Anything not too big or important.”

Daisy thought for a moment, she wanted to tell Peggy that Hydra infiltrated Shield. But when she caught Phil’s gaze, she knew that was a no go.

“You have a great-niece, named Sharon.”

Peggy blinked, before writing it down; she had not been expecting that.

~~~~

After the meeting, Peggy went straight to Howard’s current residence equipped with her notes, somewhat mentally prepared to travel through time, but still feeling some trepidation at the prospect of being a guinea pig for one of Howard’s harebrained inventions, which was sensible.

She looked at him fiddling with a series of number dials on a cylindrical device, the outer edge had a series of rectangular gaps in it, through which she could see a jumble of brightly coloured wires and a small opaque box in the middle which she supposed was whatever sort of battery one used to power a time travel device.

“Now you know I was trying not to use this thing,” Peggy waited for the stipulation. “So, full disclosure? I haven’t actually gotten around to testing it yet…”

They were going to be the very first guinea pigs. Wonderful.

Peggy took a bottle from the liquor cabinet at the back of the room and poured them both a glass of for Dutch courage.

Howard was fiddling with the wiring attached to the dials intently and didn't notice.

“So you don’t even know if it works?”

“ _I_ built it, of course it works,” he sounded indignant.

“That’s not the scientific method,” she pointed out, matter of factly.

Although they both knew he had a rather impressive record of making things work first time, his arrogance was irritating and he did need his ego kept in check, a cause which Peggy was happy to contribute to. Especially when the stakes were so high.

“Alright, you want to see it in action? Let’s see it in action.”

“Howard-“

All of a sudden there were alarm bells ringing in her mind telling her this was not a good idea; this would not end well.

But Howard wasn’t listening anymore; he was convinced he was right and determined to prove it. The cost of a decision like that would only occur to him later, when he got stuck and had a lot of time to think. The dials already set, he rose from the couch, pressed a button and just like that, a vertical crack from floor to ceiling broken open in the room with a persistent crackle like electricity through old wires.

Howard looked at her triumphantly.

Peggy stood up and looked at the rift, time broken open in front of her and all she could manage was a whisper, “what have you done.”

“C’mon Peggy, this is a cool thing! I literally made a time machine. HG Wells would be proud.”

“I don’t think we got the same message from that book,” she retorted dryly.

He simply grinned, “but that was fiction. Let’s go see what the real thing is like.”

He was looking at the void in front of him like his birthday had come early.

“I’m starting to think this isn’t a good idea.” A second passed. “Actually, I have now thought about it, and this is definitely not a good idea.”

When Peggy’s stubborn streak started shining through, there was very little Howard Stark or anyone else could do to sway her. But, if there was anything he knew for certain, it’s that he might not be able to convince Peggy to come with him, but Peggy would most certainly follow him through, if only to pull him back. 

Peggy approached him as she would a skittish animal; she knew the look in his eye all too well.

“Howard, please, let’s think about this rationally.”

“Come on Pegs, it’s an adventure!”

She looked at him, with her hands on her hips, “was the war not enough adventure for you?”

The smart reply died on his tongue, “after this, I’m going to rescue Steve.”

“Howard-“

This was a mistake. Peggy reached for his arm to stop him, but it was too late. Before she could even say his name, he had stepped into the rift and vanished.

Peggy knew she had to go in after him; his self-destructive streak would mostly likely get him killed if she didn’t. She took a breath, double checked her gun was loaded in her thigh holster and took a step forward; the last thought on her mind was whether or not she would get to see Angie again.

~~~~

When she landed, the first thing that struck her was that the air was different. And then that she was alone.

Peggy found Howard around the corner on a stoop reading a newspaper. She rolled her eyes at him, not noticing the strange look on his face.

He noticed she’d come through and schooled his features, putting the paper away, bar a small section he tore off and slipped into his pocket discreetly.

“You came!”

“I did. Now let’s head back.”

“Peggy,” Howard gestured empathically, “at least let’s figure out if those lost folks in our time are telling the truth?”

Peggy looked around, noticing that the sky did not currently appear to be falling down and to be fair, they were already here... She sighed, “alright, and then we’ll head back right away, and I mean the minute we’re done. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Howard got up and slid his hands into his pocket with a moustachioed grin.

It took them two hours to find the New York Public Library, and double check the information from Daisy and Coulson in a book, a sports magazine, and the public records. Howard went alone to check the public record for Sharon Carter, as Peggy didn’t want to stumble across any knowledge about herself or her family that she wasn’t supposed to have yet. But it didn’t take him long, and as he returned, Peggy was still searching for the Women’s World Cup results, so he figured he had another few minutes to spare. He slipped the fragment of newspaper out of his pocket and went back check for another record.

Soon enough, they were both done. Then they found a quiet street between two tall buildings and opened a rift back to their time.

~~~~

Once they were back, Peggy phoned Coulson and Daisy again and told them to meet her and Howard on the roof where the helicarrier in an hour. They did, and there was a brief gulch as a result of Daisy and Phil being a little bit in star-struck from meeting Howard Stark; once he was done preening - at least to Peggy’s mind, she was sure he could go on forever - they were ready to go.

To make sure things ran smoothly this time as well, Peggy and Howard went with them aboard the helicarrier, Howard opened a portal to their time and they flew into it.

As soon as Daisy and Coulson recognised that they were back in their own New York, there were smiles all around and general merriment as they landed to let Peggy and Howard off. Daisy and Coulson thanked them profusely and they parted ways. Soon enough, Peggy and Howard had found their way back to a quiet alley and Howard opened a time rift back to their home time.

This time when they came through the other side, Peggy felt a sudden wave of nausea, but she supposed there could be worse side effects to time travel, and tried to distract herself by looking at their surroundings. That was when she noticed, they were still in 2020.

“Howard-“

“You don’t need to say it, I know.” He sounded disheartened.

“What went wrong?” She said simply.

“It’s time,” he shrugged, “I guess it’s more of an exact science than I thought.”

Peggy suddenly noticed that the crackling had stopped. She turned back to where to rift had been, only to find empty space.

Howard looked at Peggy to find her holding onto a wall and looking a little queasy, “and how, pray tell, do you suggest we get home?” Her tone had taken on a sharp edge, which was fair enough considering the circumstances.

He held his hands up in surrender, which would probably been more meaningful if it didn’t draw attention to the very device which had malfunctioned and kept them here. She had a point. “I’ll start working on it.”

He twisted the end of the device and popped open the casing, peering inside at the wires as though he hoped there would be a simple solution.

After a moment in which she realised there was not much she could do to help Peggy sat on a nearby fire escape and really looked at the unfamiliar buildings in the distance in the middle of New York, 2020. It was still utterly surreal.

~~~~

It was a few hours before Howard held the device out in front of him triumphantly and stood up from where he had joined Peggy on the fire escape.

“Done!”

Peggy looked at him tiredly, “we can go home?”

“Yep, just a flick of this button,” he pressed it as he spoke and gave Peggy back the knife he had borrowed to do repairs, “and Bob’s your uncle.”

Peggy stretched and sighed in relief, returning the knife to it’s sheath and then her pocket. She hadn’t thought she would be happy to be going through the time rift again, in fact the thought still made her feel very uneasy, but it was this or staying trapped in 2020; which wasn’t a real option. So Peggy and Howard walked together through the rift, and got stuck in the fourth dimension of space-time.


	4. Chapter 4

Being stuck in a time stream in limbo for so long gave Peggy a lot of time to think. She thought at first about how they could get out of limbo, but that seemed futile given her current lack of knowledge on the situation. So she thought about the things she missed, and things she would rather be doing; mostly, she thought about Angie. She thought about how she’d been plain silly to give her up so easily, even if it was in an effort to protect her. It had seemed like such a logical choice at the time, but now she wasn’t so sure it was good logic. She wanted to go right back to when she had left off and fix things. Unbeknownst to her, she would soon have the chance.

It had felt like an eternity they had been stuck, but it was impossible to measure the passing of the very thing they were stuck in. Eventually though, something changed in the stream of time they were caught in, and they were spit out back to 1946, to approximately a few hours before they had left, judging by the sun still yet to rise.

Shaken up and not wanting to run into their past selves, they went to another of Howard’s houses, one which had a lab. He ran preliminary tests on them both as quickly as possible, and found that they had both been exposed to gamma radiation during their travels. So he planned to do some research and find a way to counteract the effects of the radiation. He also vowed to do a lot more research on the time travel device before anyone used it again. It would have been a vow most unlike him, but they were not the same people who had fallen into a time stream limbo between 2020 and 1946.

Three and a half hours later, Peggy walked over to the house she shared with Angie. Although she was tempted to send her younger self a message not to do any time travel, that didn’t seem like a good idea given that it could create some kind of time paradox. So she stood in the shadows and waited until the other Peggy was out of sight, then walked up to her house and unlocked the door with her key. She had made a cup of tea for Angie and undressed before the other woman had even woken up to realise she’d gone.

It was perfect. Looking over at Angie now, she tried to memorise all the details that had faded from her memory with time, and she couldn’t believe how lucky she was to get a second chance with the woman sleeping peacefully beside her. After gazing at Angie for a while, she allowed herself to relax and accept that this was real, and not a dream she was having in limbo. She was suddenly thankful she’d called into work to get the day off, albeit originally to help out Daisy and Coulson; but now it meant that she was free to spend Angie’s day off with her. She took the book she’d left on the nightstand what felt like years ago, took out the scrap of paper she was using as a bookmark, and started reading.

~~~~

It was four days before Howard turned up at their door late one evening, highly sleep-deprived from the look of it. Peggy ushered him in and directed him towards the study, before going to Angie, kissing her on the forehead and telling her she just had to have a quick meeting then she’d be right back to listen to Benny Goodman on the wireless with her.

Once Peggy closed the study door behind her, Howard didn’t waste time with small talk.

“You know how we were exposed to that dangerous radiation?” Peggy nodded. “Well, what with how long we were in limbo, we came into contact with a whole lot more of it than my calculations suggest is safe.” His hands were in his pockets, “safe for any human in a few lifetimes really, much less all at once.”

There always seemed to be another complication with Howard. Peggy sighed, would it ever end…?

“So I’ve put these together.” He took a small medicine bottle full of little round pills out of his inside jacket pocket and offered it to her. “I also added a little something to help us get back the time we lost in limbo. Well, physically anyway.” Peggy took the bottle and opened it carefully, tipping out a single pill to study it more closely. “Think of it as a multivitamin.” Peggy’s gaze flicked to him, but she said nothing. “You’re welcome.”

“As much as I do appreciate it Howard, I feel the need to check; these have been tested?”

Howard nodded, “extensively.” He had even devised a simulator to test it on various subjects without actually putting anyone in danger; he was pretty sure this made him a responsible adult. He didn’t tell Peggy that the simulator was heavily inspired by a device he’d learnt about from a newspaper in the future. He would just keep it to himself and no one would ever need to know… Maybe ‘part-time semi-responsible adult’ was more accurate.

He also didn’t tell Peggy that the final version of the formula had produced some very healthy, but also extremely buff, virtual rabbits in his simulations. In his human simulations, it had been a smaller effect, but still noticeable. It seemed to be a concurrent side effect to slowing the ageing process, which didn’t make a lot of sense, but didn’t seem to be harmful. Besides, he figured Peggy was already able to do 107 one armed push ups, so she probably wouldn’t notice a little extra strength.

In the meantime, Howard had also done extensive testing on the time travel device, he found what had gone wrong, and he made sure it would never happen again.

“From my calculations, we’ll need to take them for a while, I reckon a few years at least.” He paused with a sigh, “it’s not ideal but it’ll work.”

Peggy was just glad Howard had come to her with a solution. She thanked him and after a quick catch up, they parted ways.

When Peggy closed the door behind him and returned to Angie, she found her on the sofa, looking sleepily up at Peggy with a smile as she walked in. She’d definitely missed Benny Goodman, but Angie didn’t seem to mind.

Peggy felt her heart flutter in her chest as she pressed a kiss to Angie’s temple before sitting next to her. On nights like this, sometimes it felt like they were the only people in the world. And Peggy knew for sure she was the luckiest person in it. 

Angie would’ve disagreed vehemently and said they were tied for first place, which Peggy would acquiesce to, if only because she couldn’t resist Angie’s endearing pout and petulantly folded arms when she didn’t get her way.

~~~~

“I want to take you out,” Peggy said out of the blue as she walked with Angie to work.

“We are out, English,” Angie teased, gesturing around them at the bustle of New York that was already starting to pick up, despite the relatively early hour.

“You know what I mean,” she looked at Angie, “I want to take you somewhere nice, for dinner. Like a proper,” she looked around and whispered, “date.”

Angie brushed her hand against Peggy’s and caught her gaze, “I could get on board with that.” She grinned. “How’s Friday?”

“I’ll pick you up at 7?”

Angie laughed, “you do remember that we live together?”

“And? What’s your point?”

Angie just kept grinning at Peggy.

“It’s a date.”

Then they were at the Automat and Angie waved goodbye to Peggy, who smiled back before turning around and heading to the office.

~~~~

When Friday evening rolled around, Angie felt the butterflies in her chest as she got ready, taking her time to enjoy picking out a dark green dress she knew Peggy liked her in. She tried to quell her nerves as she did her hair; it was daft, they had dates before. Sort of, anyway; it was difficult to go to a romantic restaurant and actually act like a couple when it would get them both in trouble – which was also ridiculous, but Angie was hopeful things wouldn’t be that way forever. And they had been able to have more than a few romantic nights in, too; Angie remembered their first in this house quite vividly.

_On the night Angie had officially moved the last box of things into the house and spent the afternoon unpacking, she truly felt like she lived there. She finished earlier than expected and Peggy was still at work, so she’d decided to do something to celebrate, ready for when Peggy came home, hopefully._

_She’d gone to the market, and picked up a few bits and pieces to make dinner, along with some candles. As a treat, she’d even gone to the record store and picked out one with Someone To Watch Over Me on it; after all, it was pretty much their song._

_When she got back, it was still early but getting dark, but that was normal for winter and the reason Angie had got the candles in the first place._

_Not long after, she had made her famous chicken with Alfredo sauce - though it was her Nonna’s recipe, naturally - figuring she would cook the fettuccine fresh when Peggy eventually did get back. She cleared a space in the living room and started lighting the candles she had carefully positioned around the space._

_It was brighter than she was expecting it to be, and warmer, so she flicked off the lamp she had left on it the corner, just in case._

_When Peggy got home, the first thing that hit her was the delicious smell of Angie’s cooking. She was about to flick on the light in the corridor, when she noticed a warm, dim glow coming from the living room. She took off her coat and kicked off her shoes, before heading over to investigate._

_She found Angie sitting on a blanket in the middle of the floor, bathed in candle light and looking like a vision._

_When Peggy didn’t speak or make a move closer, Angie spoke. “It’s an indoor picnic,” she smiled happily, “to celebrate me finally moving in.”_

_“You are truly wonderful, do you know that?”_

_She blushed, “I don’t mind being reminded.”_

_“I think I could manage that,” Peggy made her way over to Angie and kissed her sweetly._

_Angie kissed her back for a moment, before pulling away. She gestured for Peggy to sit and got up, putting her new record on to play on her way to the kitchen, “make yourself comfortable. I made dinner.”_

_She did as Angie said and sat on the other side of the blanket, “it smells amazing, Angie.”_

_“I know.”_

_Angie sent a wink back over her shoulder and Peggy smiled; she was very quickly becoming rather accustomed to having Angie around._

Angie looked at the bedroom clock as she slid on her favourite black shoes. It was 6:58pm, she was ready and there was still no sign of Peggy. The thought had crossed her mind that this might happen. She sighed, trying not to be disappointed that Peggy was going to be late home and then may want to change and she would probably be tired, and they might not end up going out at all. As much as she enjoyed getting dressed up, and she did, she also enjoyed dressing up for a reason and having all that effort actually appreciated.

Angie smoothed her dress once more and decided she should go downstairs and turn on the wireless; it would give her a distraction from the feeling settling in the bottom of her stomach of her being second best to Peggy’s work again. It was a lot more understandable when Peggy didn’t specifically make plans to be with her, which then fell through.

As Angie made her way down the stairs to the living room, the bell rang. She opened it to find Peggy standing there in a navy evening dress, holding a bunch of peonies in front of her with an almost shy smile. Angie squealed as she accepted the flowers, pulling Peggy inside and closing the door so she could kiss her properly.

“Aw Pegs… You remembered they’re my favourite.” She sniffed them deeply, enjoying all the different shades from a crisp white to dark pink as she did.

“Of course, darling,” Peggy gave her a brilliant smile and cupped her cheek, kissing her again. “And you look lovely by the way.” She took a moment to fully appreciate Angie’s outfit right down to what she knew were Angie’s favourite shoes, “absolutely stunning.”

Angie’s cheeks went a little pink, “thank you,” she twirled, still holding her flowers. She stopped for a moment to appreciate Peggy’s well-fitting dress in turn, “you look as gorgeous as ever.” Her eyes lingered on Peggy’s lipstick, she really did love that shade on her. When she met Peggy’s gaze again, her eyes were dark. The look she gave her almost made Peggy reconsider going out. But she was determined to go a proper date with Angie and tonight was going to be perfect.

“Are you ready to go?”

Angie nodded, “just a sec.”

She practically skipped into the kitchen, found a vase, filled it with water, and put the flowers in. That would do for now, until she could trim their stems. Still grinning from ear to ear, she grabbed her purse and gave Peggy one last, lingering kiss.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Peggy smiled and opened the door for Angie.

To her credit, Peggy was always gentlewomanly with Angie, carrying thing for her and opening doors and generally looking out for her in a considerate sort of way, but for some reason, tonight it was giving her butterflies.

Peggy took her to a restaurant in Greenwich Village, tucked discreetly behind a faded blue door which opened only after Peggy gave a password.

As they stepped in, Angie noticed in the soft lighting that most of the tables had high walls surrounding them like a cubicle, with the partly open side facing out. She turned to Peggy and breathed, “what is this place?”

Peggy took her hand and kissed it as they were led to a table, “somewhere we can be ourselves.” Angie’s initial reaction was to jerk back and look around quickly to make sure no one had seen, after all they were in public. But as she looked around again, she noticed that the people in the cubicles that she could see, were mostly same sex couples, opening being affectionate.

Angie looked at Peggy and took her hand, holding it a little uncertainly. She could feel tears pricking at the back of her eyes. She never thought she would have this simply luxury outside the confines of home with Peggy.

They sat on the same side of the booth and although the food was good, Angie’s favourite thing about the restaurant was that they were free to be as affectionate as they wanted the entire time, and she made sure to take advantage of it. There wasn’t a moment all evening she wasn’t touching Peggy; resting a hand on her thigh or playing footsie under the table, pepping little kisses on her cheek. Though Peggy’s Britishness started shining through when she got a little flustered at all the little kisses.

“You okay there, English?” Angie said teasingly, she had quickly gotten used to being publicly affectionate and was enjoying it with a lightness in her chest that made her feel like she could walk on air. She was enjoying it almost as much as she was enjoying seeing the forever put-together Peggy Carter, getting more than a little bit flushed by her displays of affections.

She cleared her throat, “yes, thank you, Angie.”

Angie grinned and leaned in, pressing an open mouthed kiss just below her ear, before whispering, “are you sure?”

Peggy bit her lip and didn’t reply.

This was Angie’s new favourite game. But she didn’t get much chance to play it longer, as suddenly Peggy had pulled out her purse and left enough to pay for the meal as well as a generous tip, and was dragging Angie out of the door.

The wine they’d had with dinner was going straight to her head and Angie was trying not to giggle as Peggy hailed a cab; but she was trying harder not to give into the temptation to pull Peggy close to give her more of those kisses, she loved the reactions she could elicit from Peggy, how she could make her lose control. But then she loved a lot of things about Peggy. Most of all, she just loved Peggy. Her tipsy brain paused for a moment; she knew she had been trying not to tell Peggy that she loved her, because it was way too soon for that. But suddenly that just didn’t seem to matter.

A cab pulled up in front of them, and before they got in Angie knew she had to say it.

“Peggy, I-“

Peggy turned to look at her. And then the wine from earlier made an unwelcome reappearance.

At the sight, the cab driver drove away; leaving Peggy rubbing soothing little circles on Angie’s back and handing her a pocket tissue. After sitting her down carefully on a nearby bench, Peggy went and got a glass of water from somewhere, which was the best thing in the world to Angie at that moment. 

“Alright, English. Let’s go.”

“Are you going to be okay to head back in a cab? We can wait as long as you need for your stomach to settle.” Peggy looked at her with concern.

“I am gonna be a-okay, English. Let’s go home.”

Peggy returned the glass then hailed another cab. They made it home quite quickly and got ready for bed. Angie seemed to be fine, but Peggy put a fresh glass of water on her nightstand just in case.

~~~

It was a few hours later, but still there was no sunlight coming through the window when Angie woke up to find Peggy sitting up, looking a million miles away in the darkness.

Angie snuggled closer to her, putting a hand on her abdomen and tracing random little patterns with her fingertips.

“You okay, English?”

Peggy turned to look at her and nodded, “I’m okay. How are you feeling?”

Angie groaned, burying her head into Peggy’s side at the memory of earlier. “Much better.” She peeked up at Peggy, “I’m sorry I ruined our date. It was perfect though, one of the best nights of my life.”

Peggy smiled softly and tucked a stray lock of hair threatening to fall into Angie’s eyes, behind her ear. “You didn’t ruin anything, darling. It was wonderful to spend time out with you.”

Angie allowed herself to feel a little less guilty, but still made a silent vow to make it up to Peggy soon. She looked up at her again to find the pensieve expression still on Peggy’s features.

“Whatcha thinking about?”

Peggy took a moment, before meeting her eye and running her fingers through Angie’s hair.

“Just… life, really.”

“Nothing more specific?”

“Nothing worth worrying about,” she kept running her fingers through Angie’s hair and seemed to get lost in her thoughts again. 

Angie looked at her consideringly; it had been a while since Peggy had deflected a question like that, and she hadn’t missed it. She kept quiet for a while, and hoped that Peggy would elaborate on her own. She didn’t.

A few moments of comfortable silence stretched out between them, before Angie decided life was too short for important things to go unsaid a minute longer than they needed to.

“Peggy.”

“Mm?”

“I love you.”

Peggy turned to look at her, and the smile playing on her lips was brilliant even in the darkness, and it made Angie’s heart pound louder in her chest. She thought for a moment it was a wonder Peggy couldn’t hear it. But it wasn’t loud enough that she missed Peggy’s reply.

“I love you too.”

Angie reached up to kiss her softly, but when they parted again she only wanted more. She shifted up, out of the covers, placing her knees on either side of Peggy’s legs so she was straddling her lap, and kissed her again, cupping her face tenderly. Peggy deepened the kiss, swiping her tongue across Angie’s bottom lip and instantly Angie granted her access. Their kisses became more intense; Peggy held Angie’s waist with one hand and caressed the back of her neck with the other. Angie started trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses along her neck, before sucking a hickey just below her collarbone. Peggy moved her hands to hold Angie securely then flipped them in one smooth move to put Angie on her back with Peggy on top of her. Angie’s hands traced over Peggy’s back and along her sides, before palming her hips and pulling them down, closer to her center. Peggy’s hands slid under Angie’s nightshirt, leaving a trail of hot kisses across her stomach and up her chest as she lifted it higher; Angie sat up a little for the shirt came over her head, and captured Peggy’s lips in another heated kiss once it was off.

Angie had innocently thought that her night couldn’t get much better than going out on a proper date with Peggy, but she was wrong.

~~~~

By the time they both woke up from dozing gently, naked limbs tangled together, the sun was high in the sky.

Peggy was the first to wake, purely out of habit. Angie awoke shortly after and sleepily pressed a kiss to the closest part of Peggy she could find, her arm, before scooching in closer and resting her head on Peggy’s chest.

Peggy smiled at Angie’s endearing antics, “morning, sweetheart.”

Angie pulled the duvet up over her eyes, “that’s your opinion.” She would never be a morning person, judging from the clock on the wall with it’s hands approaching 12. She would much rather be a night person and spend those nights like last night with Peggy.

Peggy chuckled lightly and ran her fingers softly through Angie’s hair, “okay darling.”

Angie reappeared from under the duvet and turned slightly to capture Peggy’s lips in a kiss. On second thoughts, if she got to spend mornings like this, perhaps they weren’t so bad after all.


	5. Chapter 5

_1948_

Howard sat back in his chair. It had taken him two years longer than he thought it would to figure out how to get Steve back amongst the living. Or at least, those living at room temperature. But he’d figured it out and now everything was coming together. The last piece of the puzzle was getting Peggy on board. The first time he had tried to convince her, it hadn’t gone so well, not that Peggy remembered that.

He eyed a gadget on his workbench that looked like a camera, it was even equipped with a light bulb, but it wasn’t designed to capture moments in pictures, it was designed to remove a person’s memories. He picked it up and placed it carefully into a bag. He figured it was better to be prepared, in case this time didn’t go any better.

~~~~

Across town, there was one last file on Peggy’s desk that she wanted to get through before calling it a day and going home. She assumed it was another update on the lengthy bureaucratic process she’d been enduring in order to set up an independent intelligence agency; the Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-Enforcement Division, or SHIELD. She wasn’t as fond of the full title as Howard, but the acronym was something she could get on board with because being a shield was the aim of the agency and something the world desperately needed.

Taking a quick sip of coffee, Peggy glanced at the clock on the wall. If she hurried, she’d even make it in time to pick up dessert on the way home.

She flicked open the file and was greeted by a draft Bill; a piece of proposed legislation which would guarantee the rights of same sex couples to marry. The details, such as the exact wording, were still in the process of being worked out, but it was set to be formally considered and brought into law in just two months. Peggy didn’t even realise she was smiling until her assistant knocked on her door to say goodbye for the evening.

There were a lot of things Peggy was proud of having achieved in her career, but this was something else. As much as she preferred a fast, blunt approach, the document in her hand spoke to the benefits of delicacy and gently swaying ignorant opinions over time. And it had been a long time coming; once she’d floated the idea, Howard had started organising their attendance at important events strategically and now nearly 18 months later, there was real change to show for it. Although it hadn’t seemed like it at the time, in hindsight Peggy reflected that maybe all those endlessly dull dinners filled with small talk that drained her energy more than all the boring reports on her desk ever would, were worth it.

On her way home, without even consciously planning to do so, Peggy found herself walking into a jewellery store.

~~~~

It had taken longer than Angie would care to admit, for her to get a role on stage. But she had got that offer, finally. Talk about a closed-off industry. But Angie was undeterred. This could be her breakout role. It was unlikely, as she was in the ensemble and there was some big name she’d personally never heard of starring in the show, who would no doubt draw all the focus, but it was something. A start and a confidence boost that maybe she could make it as an actress after all.

Angie thought she was handling the nerves pretty well; she just kept rehearsing the dance numbers over and over in the living room, which is where Peggy found her when she came home.

“Darling?”

“Living room. Did you bring dessert?”

There was a moment of silence before Peggy appeared and kissed her sweetly, “give me ten minutes.”

Angie grinned as Peggy walked right back out the door; some things would never change.

She had no way of knowing that Peggy had fully intended on going to the bakery when she left work, but had then encountered a distraction which had somehow sent all thoughts of dessert flying right out of her head.

Peggy had never been much of one for jewellery, as much as heavy rings were good to punch with to cause damage in a fight, but she was fairly good at picking out things other people would like, a skill she had been relying on as she browsed the ring display. She told herself it was research, that it was unlikely she was going to find something perfect in the first place she looked. But then she had seen a thin gold engagement ring, with a beautiful central diamond bracketed by sapphires the colour of Angie’s eyes. Without a second thought she was calling over a member of staff and asking to purchase it.

~~~~

Peggy was in an almost giddy mood for the next few days, and it had the other staff in the office more on edge than when she was in a bad mood; they thought it was disconcerting. She didn’t care.

After a late breakfast at her work desk, she pulled a medicine bottle from her jacket pocket. It felt like an age ago Howard had given her these and now, once they were finished, she had decided it was the mark of a new chapter. It was the final thing she wanted to do before proposing to Angie; though the thought still stirred up a storm of butterflies in her chest. They might not be able to get married for another couple of months, but that wasn’t as important as the fact that they could soon _officially_ be a married couple just like any other. Times were changing.

She paused; if Angie wanted to marry her; they’d never really discussed it. Peggy’s giddiness was suddenly tempered a little by reality. She realised she probably should have mentioned it before attempting to get it concretely written into the law, not to mention getting a ring and planning a proposal. And she couldn’t really bring it up now without giving the game away; she could hide a lot of things, but not something like this from Angie during a conversation about the very subject. Peggy took a breath to center herself; it was always going to be an intimate proposal anyway, just the two of them, no pressure on Angie to say yes or risk of embarrassing either of them. Well, less risk. Knowing Angie, Peggy figured she would probably say yes, and she was good at reading people. This was either going to be a super romantic gesture, or wind up FUBAR, but there was only one way to know for sure. The butterflies in her chest suddenly had weight.

Peggy looked at the two little round pills sitting in the bottle; she’d been counting down the days for a while, but it was difficult to hide a smile at the fact that she would be done in just one more day. These things had been tiresome in more ways than one, and she was certain four coffees in an afternoon was not good for her health, but it was the only way to get everything done that she needed to. Nevertheless, Howard’s inventions truly were a marvel. Although, they didn’t make up for the fact that he had gotten them stranded in time for what felt like forever, being able to get those years back in a roundabout way, and now knowing more certainly than ever what her priorities were, made it something she could live with.

~~~

_The evening_

In the living room, Peggy was working through some papers as Angie snuggled up into her, going through a script and making the occasional note in the margin. Peggy tried to refocus on the report in front of her; it was the fourth time she had read the same line but the information wasn’t going in, her mind was elsewhere. The last few evenings had been a test of her convictions; the ring hidden in the secret compartment of her dresser upstairs sprang to mind every time Angie did something endearing, which was often.

With her favourite person in the world leaning up against her, muttering softly to herself and pulling faces at some of the lines her character had to say, Peggy was truly tempted just to ask Angie to marry her right then and there. But instead, she caressed Angie’s hair and steeled herself. It would be worth waiting, _just one more day_. She could barely contain the lightness in her chest at the thought, but settled for a smile and pressing a kiss to Angie’s temple.

~~~~

_The next day_

Peggy had woken early; it was a habit she was comfortable with, despite having taken a couple of days off from work. Either Angie would say yes or she would say no, whichever way the cookie crumbled, she was 100% sure that for once, she did not want to be in the office afterwards. Though knowing herself, she’d brought home a stack of files which were currently in the study, just in case.

Realising she’d left the medicine bottle in her jacket yesterday, she pressed a kiss to Angie’s cheek as she slept, snoring softly, before quietly slipping on her dressing gown to ward off the morning chill, and making her way downstairs.

Peggy tipped the medicine bottle until the sole remaining pill tumbled down into her hand, _finally_. But before she could do anything else, the bell rang insistently, like someone impatient was repeatedly holding down the button.

She swallowed the pill before striding over to the door and sure enough, Howard was standing there abusing the doorbell.

“Peggy, have you taken the last one?”

“Just now…” she raised an eyebrow; this was unlikely to be good news judging by the look on his face.

“Perfect.” He paused briefly as if gathering courage, “I hate to tell you this. But, we can’t stay.”

He edged past her in the house as she stood holding the door, wordlessly processing that. She found him pacing the living room a moment later.

Peggy looked at him incredulously, but spoke in a hushed tone, mindful of Angie sleeping upstairs. “What? What do you mean we can’t stay? After everything-” Howard looked at her and the seriousness in his gaze stopped her short. The last time he had looked like this, he had told her Steve’s blood was in a vial. “What exactly, is going on?”

“Well, we’re not supposed to be here.”

“Okay...”

“And it’s… Well, it’s changing things.”

“Could you be slightly more specific?”

Peggy sat on the sofa, arms folded tightly across her chest.

“When we came back from the future, I made another device.” Peggy stared at him hard with narrowed eyes. “No, this one was actually for… I guess you could call them, good reasons?” Peggy said nothing, reserving judgement for when he had finished speaking. “I call it the Moderator; it measures the affect of our actions today on the future we saw. Basically, it indicates if we’re messing up the timeline.” Peggy didn’t like where this was going. She also didn’t like that Howard’s moustache was bristling; it was one of his more obvious tells that he was lying. “And we’re messing up the timeline, Pegs.” He sighed, finally taking a seat and putting his head in his hands.

“Just by being here?”

“Pretty much, by being here, and by not being who we were before we left.”

Stress was a rare look on Howard, enough for her to dread the inevitability of the conclusion he was leading to.

She spoke softly, “we have to leave.”

“Yeah, we have to leave.” He took a breath, “and to change everything back we have to wipe our memories and return everything to the way it was before.”

Peggy could’ve cried in frustration.

“We have, quite literally, just finished recovering from the last trip.” He knew today was the last pill.

“Which is why now’s the perfect time to leave. Now we can handle another trip.” It really was impeccable timing. He looked at her sincerely and spoke quietly for a moment, “we won’t get stuck in limbo again.”

Although that eventuality had occurred to her and it was far from a pleasant thought, it was the life she’d built with Angie over the past couple of years that was occupying the forefront of her mind. And what distracted her momentarily from wondering why Howard was showing telltale signs of lying.

Peggy looked up for a moment, dabbing any excess moisture away from her eyes with a fingertip. She had lost everything, more than once, and now she’d truly thought she had a chance to have it all again, only to fall right back down to square one, without even her memories of the last few years with Angie. No, it wasn’t an option. She refused to start over again.

She closed her eyes for a minute and took a steadying breath, “what if we don’t?”

At the look on her face Howard almost stopped and gave up his plan. This was a curveball. Howard had really thought that would be enough to sway her; Peggy had always had such a righteous streak, it reminded him of Steve. The thought of Steve tugged at the weight of his guilt settled over him like a blanket, and the temptation to correct course now evaporated. It was his fault Steve was gone and he was going to fix it. He just needed Peggy’s help to do it. 

He took a breath. “Things start going wrong in the future. I don’t know how wrong, but the longer we’re here accidentally changing things, the bigger the butterfly effect’ll be.”

She got caught up in her thoughts for a moment, caught in a delicate balance between knowing her mind was made up and that it felt like the right decision, but also knowing she should probably be trying to convince herself to leave Angie if it was for the greater good. But she wasn’t convinced it _was_ for the greater good. The only thing she was certain of, was that there was something Howard wasn’t telling her. And until he did, she trusted her decision more than his lie.

But she wasn’t going to tell him that just yet, not until she could figure out why he was lying.

“I can’t leave her again, Howard. I just… I won’t do it.”

Howard looked at Peggy, “she’ll forgive you, you know.”

Peggy closed her eyes for a moment, thinking. Regardless of anything else, Howard’s words were a hollow comfort; there would be nothing to forgive because they would have had nothing in the first place.

“She won’t have to, because I’m not going.” She rose with her arms still folded, determination shining through her voice. She refused to play whatever little game Howard was trying to entice her into. Something about this didn’t sit right with her, and her intuition had saved her life more than once before; she absolutely trusted it now.

Howard knew that when Peggy’s stubborn streak was showing there wasn’t a hope of convincing her otherwise. He thought that was all it was. Howard nodded with a tight lipped look and started making his way back towards the front door and out. There was nothing more to say.

Peggy sat back down, lost in her thoughts for a moment, wondering what was really going on with Howard and how best to find out. She would have to arrange a meeting with Jarvis soon.

Lost in her thoughts, it was only when she got up and turned, that she saw Angie leaning against the doorframe, looking at her thoughtfully.

“Good morning darling, I didn’t hear you come down.”

Angie took a few steps towards her and cupped her cheek, “you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” she gave her a soft kiss and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with a smile. She would never grow tired of this gentle affection.

They were just starting to get breakfast ready together, when the doorbell rang for the second time that morning.

“I’ll get it,” she pecked Angie on the cheek as she walked past; Angie was currently a little bit too floury from the pancakes they were making to be in a fit state to greet people; even if those people were uninvited and interrupted their quiet mornings of domestic bliss.

Peggy opened the door, and was surprised to see Howard standing there again.

“Are you trying to give me déjà vu or something? I haven’t changed my mind in the last twenty minutes, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I know.” He gave a half smile that was nowhere close to meeting his eyes. “I am so sorry Peggy,” and he truly did look it.

He aimed a device that looked like a camera at her, a light flashed, and Peggy’s legs went beneath her.

Jarvis appeared from around the corner just in time to catch her before she hit the ground; she was passed out cold.

“I still think there must be a better way.”

“I know, Jarvis. But I sure as hell can’t figure it out right now. And we don’t have any more time to waste. It’s been long enough already.”

He clapped Jarvis on the back, before helping him lift Peggy over to Howard’s car.

“She’ll never forgive you, you know.” He paused, “not for this or for lying to her about why you want to go back.” It was unspoken that Steve wouldn’t forgive him either, if he found out. But Howard could live with that. At least, much more easily than the constant survivor’s guilt hanging over him, convincing him that losing Steve was his fault. But he was going to fix that.

“I know that too.” He grimaced and put a seatbelt over her, “which is why she’s not going to remember any of this.”

Jarvis’ disapproving look won out over his desire to remain the perfect neutral butler; after all, Peggy was his friend. Anna probably wouldn’t forgive him for his involvement either, but it was a little too late now.

Howard went back to the front door and closed it softly until the lock clicked into place, then he got in the car and Jarvis drove the three of them away. Without knowing it, Howard had changed things much more than if he had just let things be.

In the kitchen, Angie couldn’t hear anything over the light hum of Frank Sinatra’s new song on the wireless as she stirred the batter, but Peggy had been gone for more than a minute and she was curious what was keeping her.

She peered around the corner towards the door, “who was it, English?” There was no one there. “Peg?” Still carrying the bowl of batter she walked down to Peggy’s study and knocked on the door, “you’re not trying to do work again, are ya?” Her smile faded as she swung open the door to find an empty room, Peggy’s files untouched on the desk since yesterday. She walked back out into the hallway and looked up the stairs towards the bedrooms. “Peggy?” She called, to an empty house.

~~~~

Angie didn’t know why Peggy had left. She didn’t know why Peggy hadn’t at least called since she’d left. In the first few hours, she’d been mad, assuming that Peggy had gotten caught up in some work emergency and just taken off in a hurry. But that wasn’t like her. Even if she did have to go, she would’ve at least said goodbye. It was when Angie noticed that Peggy’s shoes were still by the door that she really got worried. She double checked, and the only footwear not in the house was Peggy’s slippers. Angie stopped sharply. For some reason, Peggy had left the house in the middle of the day, in her slippers, without so much as a rushed goodbye. And that series of realisations is how Angie came to the correct conclusion that Peggy had been kidnapped, but the incorrect conclusion as to who exactly had done the kidnapping.

Which is why, after a frantic rest of the day, Angie wound up in an apartment building in the South Bronx during the middle of the night, hammering on a stranger’s door like it wasn’t going to get her killed.

When the door opened, Dottie didn’t look surprised to see her.

“Hi Angie. Well this is a pleasant surprise. You know, I barely see anyone from the Griffith anymore.”

Angie looked at her, “yeah, it’s a real treat, Iowa.” Her tone dripped with disdain at the old nickname borne from a lie, but her gaze was soon focused behind Dottie, as though she was expecting Peggy to be tied to a radiator in plain view, if she could just see around the woman blocking her way. “Where’s Peggy?”

“Oh, you didn’t just stop by for a chat, huh?” Angie met Dottie’s gaze and glared.

“I’m not asking again.”

Dottie leant against the doorframe with a tilt of her head, with an amused look on her face. “Why do you think she’d be here?” It was truly irksome.

“I got connections.”

Dottie smiled, “ooh, Mafia?” Perhaps it was the airy, conversational tone, or the glint in her eye, or even the insulting but correct guess that she’d contacted her brother’s friend who knew someone in the Mafia, but Dottie was really winding Angie up. “You know, they should know better when to keep their mouth shut.” She almost told her not to worry; she had been told several times that this was a one-time favour. She didn’t want to think about what that was going to cost her – that was a problem for future Angie. And finding Peggy would make it worth it, as soon as she found Peggy, everything would be okay and she could think properly again.

Somehow, without seeming to change her expression, Dottie’s smile became sharper. Angie didn’t pause to think on it.

“I don’t have all night, Dot.”

“Oh, I haven’t seen Peggy for a long while. We didn’t end on great terms, you know. So she’s missing, huh.” Angie didn’t fully process the brief look that crossed Dottie’s face when she spoke. She was about two seconds from barging past the spy and forcing her way into the apartment to search it properly for herself, when Dottie opened the door wide for a split second to reveal a mostly empty studio before closing it swiftly, “see?” Angie looked at her suspiciously. “Well this has been a lovely catch up, but I really have to go. I’ll be seeing you.” Angie slid her foot in the door, just before Dottie could shut it. “Fast little one, ain’tcha?”

“If you didn’t take her, then help me find who did?” Her voice was steady; she refused to plead, however much she needed the help. Somehow she suspected Dottie would only take advantage of the slightest perceived weakness anyway.

But for all her acting in keeping up appearances, Angie was at the end of her tether. It didn’t matter that Dottie was untrustworthy in ways Angie wasn’t sure she understood, or that she had backstabbed them before and was quite possibly one of the last people on Earth Angie ever wanted to be around. Whatever else she was, and that was probably a lot of things, Angie knew she was also her best hope of finding Peggy. This wasn’t her world, but it was mostly certainly Dottie’s.

Dottie sized her up for a long moment. “Why should I help you?”

Angie considered who was asking the question before replying, “I’ll owe you one.”

Dottie arched an eyebrow, “and what favour could I possibly want from you?”

Angie shrugged, keeping an even tone, “help me and you can find out.” She paused, “but I’m not killing anyone.”

Dottie grinned, of all the stipulations she could have given, that was a low bar. She opened the door a little wider and offered her hand for Angie to shake. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Ange.”

~~~~

_“Angie, I’m sorry I left.”_

_“Left? LEFT? You took off from the house YOU asked me to move into with you, without so much as a GOODBYE and vanished without a damn trace, in your SLIPPERS while I was making BREAKFAST. That’s not leaving English, that’s going fucking nuclear and blowing our lives up beyond recognition!”_

Angie’s daydream of her reunion with Peggy was interrupted by Dottie. It was in fact one of a few different scenarios she’d been entertaining for the last few hours while they waited for one of Dottie’s contact to get back to her; the others involved a lot more kissing. But in all of Angie’s daydreams, Peggy had either had to leave for work in a rush, or rescued herself like the unstoppable freight train Angie knew she could be, and come straight back home to her. It was at odds with the soft and silly sides of Peggy that only she got to see, like the times she woke up all sleepy and snuggled into Angie’s side, refusing to get up. The thought almost made her smile.

The notion that Peggy was in any way hurt or injured in any way was not something Angie was allowing herself to entertain.

“I’ve got her.”

Angie opened her eyes and sat up quickly, to find Dottie sitting cross legged in front of a typewriter that had just stopped moving, apparently of it’s own accord.

“Where is she?”

“Upper West side, and she’s not alone. I’ll go stake out the area, and- hey!”

But Angie had already ripped the paper with the address on it from the typewriter, and was walking out the door. Dottie sighed and ran to catch up; it would be difficult to get Angie to pay her favour back if she got herself killed. At least, that’s what she would say if Angie asked. Though she could school her features to hide her smile well enough, there was a twinkle in her eye; this was all playing out exactly as she’d planned it.

~~~~

Angie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. After begrudgingly agreeing it was better to be informed and going to a building across the street with a telescope to do some recon, Angie was actually glad she’d listened to Dottie.

“I can’t believe it.” Angie took the telescope away from her eye, only to bring it back a second later. “I just can’t _believe_ her. No, this is something else. It’s a- a ruse or part of her job or something, yeah, that’s got to be it. She’s playing happy families for a mission. Peggy would never do this. She would _never_ , we’re in _love,_ she told me! She told me she loves me! How can she go from- from- us, to… to _that_.” She was more talking to herself than expecting Dottie to reply; she had all but forgotten Dottie was next to her.

Dottie took out another telescope from some hidden pocket in her slacks and took a look for herself. Peggy was leaning over the dining room table adorned with various plates for lunch, looking at a guy with a crutch next to him with a smile as she tidied up a mess on the table. A mess made by one of the two children, sitting at the table. It looked for all the world like a typical nuclear family.

“She _can’t_ just have a secret family….” Angie was barely holding it together; tears were falling from her eyes before she noticed she was crying, but all she felt was confused anger.

“It looks like she has.” Dottie almost sounded sincere for a moment. “I’m sorry Ange.”

Angie didn’t want to look any more, but it was almost as if she couldn’t stop herself. How had Peggy hidden this from her for so long? Was that where she’d really been all the nights she was ‘working later’, tucking her kids into bed or something? A million other questions clouded her mind.

“No, no. This isn’t right. There has to be an explanation for this. I’ll just go over there, and Peggy will just explain exactly what’s happening.”

Dottie caught her arm in a vice-like grip as she tried to pass, though her tone was as sickly sweet as ever. “Angie, you can see for yourself. I know it’s hard to believe. But keeping secrets? We both know, that’s what Peggy does.”

Angie sniffed and wiped her nose with a hanky from her dress pocket.

“No, I deserve an explanation. She owes me at least that.”

Dottie tried to catch her gaze and eventually succeeded. “You have your explanation, Angie. I know it’s hard to believe, but don’t you think it’s possible?” Angie shook her head, but the doubt was already well beyond creeping through the door; it had taken up residence at the forefront of her mind. “Peggy always did like her secrets. I wonder how much really was a classified as she said it was…” Dottie seemed to wonder aloud, and Angie was too distraught to notice that there was no real reason Dottie should have known that Peggy worked with classified information and did long days at the office. Dottie loosened her grip, and Angie tugged her arm away. “Going over there now will only hurt her family.”

“I’m her family too.”

But as she stormed down the stairs, out of the building and across the street, Angie couldn’t help but think again of the kids upstairs. She slowed as she approached the door to the lobby across the street and thought of how Peggy hadn’t actually been taken, she hadn’t even called; she had just left without warning. It didn’t really matter if you left in your slippers, when there was a whole other life waiting somewhere else, with shoes. And kids.

Suddenly she remembered her Ma’s words from when she was much younger and had gotten into a fight with a friend during a game with the other kids of their street, _“people will show you how they feel, Angini, and the ones who make you feel like this?” She wiped the tears from Angie’s cheeks gently with the pads of her thumbs, “they don’t deserve your tears”_.

It was at that moment Angie realised she was a mistress, and a disposable one, judging from how Peggy had just treated her.

Not even realising she spoke aloud, she muttered, “well if I don’t mean enough for the truth or even a damn goodbye, English. Then you don’t deserve me anyway.”

And with that, she turned on her heel and left.

It was three blocks later that Angie realised that the guy at the table with Peggy also looked familiar, because she had met him before. It was one of the guys from Peggy’s office, who’d been looking for her at the Griffith when Angie had covered for her. She stumbled but caught herself quickly. Peggy must’ve been making a fool of her for a while.

It didn’t occur to her that as they were both agents, they could have been acting for the sake of a mission or something. Angie was too busy trying to figure out the logistics of when she could move out of their home - Peggy’s second residence, she corrected herself. It was pretty unlikely Miriam Fry would take her back, but she had friends she could call to crash on their couch until she found a new place. She could even move back to her family’s place in Brooklyn if things got really dire – but she was really hoping she wouldn’t have to. She wanted a new place entirely. One that she didn’t associate with Peggy and all her secrets; which she now knew Peggy kept for less noble reasons that she pretended.

~~~~

While Angie was still out wandering around New York, heartbroken and confused and increasingly angry, Dottie had collected her sparse belongings from the studio she had been pretending to occupy when Angie came knocking, and was miles away across state lines in an attic. She pulled out the typewriter from a large bag and started mentally composing the right code for the message she was going to write in Russian. She used an entirely fresh sheet of paper for what translated to just two words, _mission successful_.


	6. Chapter 6

When they got back to 1946, Howard timed it to be before he’d told Peggy about the time travel device. It also gave him just enough time to take Peggy home, before heading over to the roof Daisy and Phil were due to land on shortly. They arrived and without much ceremony, he gave them a version of events which was closer to being a straight up lie than an edited version of the truth. And when Coulson didn’t believe him, he took out his memory eraser, used it on both of them and that was that. He dragged both of them, unconscious, back onboard the Helicarrier, set new coordinates on the autopilot system and was on his way out when something on the table caught his eye. Without much thought, he pocketed it. Then he flicked the switch to close the gangway and jumped off before it shut, opened a rift, and watched the helicarrier fly back to 2020.

Once it was gone, he climbed down the fire escape into an alley and opened a new rift to February 1945, shortly before the Valkyrie was due to crash into the ice.

~~~~

_One week later_

Peggy had been sitting at her desk all morning, struggling to focus. She hadn’t been feeling like herself. She couldn’t quite put a finger on what exactly had happened, but she often found herself seeing things differently than before. On top of that, somehow her memories of Steve weren’t as defined in her mind, and the ache in her chest which had been slowly dulling for the past year at the thought of him was completely gone. She also kept finding thoughts popping into her head with knowledge which felt instinctively as true as the fact that grass is green, but that upon examination, she had absolutely no way of knowing. Something odd indeed seemed to be happening.

Peggy was about to get another cup of coffee, when she thought she’d better stay at her desk for a moment as Thompson was about to call her into his office.

She paused. How did she know that and why would he-

“Carter.”

Peggy looked up to find Thomson leaning around the door of his office and gesturing for her to come over.

~~~~

Standing in Chief Thompson’s office, Peggy felt slightly bewildered.

“Look Carter, I know we’re not using your talents. And here,” Thompson looked around with a sigh, “we just can’t. There’s too much pressure from the higher ups, what with all these whispers of change coming down the pipeline. Everyone’s uneasy.” She was about to protest when he held up a hand, “but we can use you out in LA.”

Peggy stared at him, then cleared her throat, “as in, I’ll actually run cases? Do fieldwork?” There had to be a catch.

He nodded. “After your efforts on the Stark case and with Leviathan, I spoke to the boys in DC and they agreed to give you a chance. I can arrange the transfer, temporarily to start with. It’s a newer office, smaller, fewer agents, and more chances to jump on cases. But you’ll have to start small, and if you do well, it could become permanent.”

Maybe he wasn’t such a jackass after all.

As much as she would miss New York and the constant bittersweet reminders of Steve, maybe it was best to get some space from it all for a while. She needed to clear her head and a fresh start might be a good way to do that, plus this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Though she was suspicious, she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth just yet; which is also why she ignored the nagging feeling that she was making the wrong decision, like it was déjà vu, except she wasn’t following the script.

“When do I leave?”

He’d known she’d say yes; the flight was already booked, “how’s two days sound? Here are the details.” He picked up a folder from his desk and handed it to her.

“Perfect.” She took it and turned to leave, before facing him briefly, “thank you, Jack.”

He nodded and she left his office; two days was tight, but she could swing it. Thank goodness for Howard and his many houses dotted all over the place. She would have to call him about the move, and Jarvis too. But first, as soon as her desk was packed up, she had to talk to Angie. The most painful conversation should be first, it was just like ripping off a plaster; only much more painful because she wasn’t half in love with a plaster and about to leave it behind to move across the country indefinitely.

The thought of asking Angie to come with her crossed her mind briefly enough for Peggy to dismiss it without thinking about it too much. Angie’s dream was Broadway, there was only one Broadway and it definitely wasn’t in LA. It would be purely selfish to ask Angie to come with her. Besides, why would she? People don’t usually move thousands of miles for their friends. Even if they were really good friends.

Yet a part of Peggy knew that Angie would come with her in a heartbeat if she asked. But there were too many strange things going on right now for Peggy to even make the suggestion, they were all just further reminders that her world was unpredictable at best and dangerous by nature. Angie was not equipped for it, and Peggy refused to put her in danger like that. Allowing herself to indulge her feelings for Angie wasn’t on the table when she couldn’t even trust her own mind; it was much more of a priority to figure out why she kept inadvertently predicting and recalling things she had no way of knowing. 

~~~~

Since Peggy had popped in during her lunch break to tell her she was moving far away, Angie had been daydreaming about giving her a reason to stay; going up to her all romantic-like, sweeping her off her feet and kissing her like in the movies. Except with more romance and a proper kiss, because half of those guys didn’t seem to know what they were doing or how to treat a beautiful lady.

But she knew it was selfish, which is why those ideas were going to stay strictly in her imagination. That and the fact that Peggy was the job; she lived it like it was a lifestyle and made sacrifices big and small every other day to do it. Trying to give her a reason to stay wouldn’t end well for either of them long term, she was almost certain of that much. But Angie could dream, and she was always hopeful. Since she was 12 and had told her father she was going to be an actress when she grew up, and he had smiled and kissed the top of her head and called her hopeful, that hopefulness hadn’t changed; Angie was also incredibly stubborn, when she wanted to be.

Leaning on the Automat counter top, Angie sighed. She’d been replaying different scenarios in her mind so often it was starting to interfere with her work. Not that there was much to do in the L&L after the lunch time rush on a weekday afternoon, and it certainly wasn’t life or death. But it was giving her time to see hope where maybe there wasn’t any, as much as she tried not to; she told herself to be realistic, that Peggy was leaving and that was that. For a moment she wondered what the acting scene was like in LA, but then her thoughts were rudely interrupted by a customer demanding a refill. She glanced at the clock as she poured him a fresh cup of coffee, less than an hour to go until her shift was up. Maybe she should just go over to Peggy’s, to say goodbye. Friends do that. In fact, she’d be a bad friend if she didn’t, she decided. She smiled and walked back to the counter with a little bit of a spring in her step.

~~~~

Peggy was packing when the doorbell rang. She headed downstairs, supposing it was Jarvis who had received her message and come to say goodbye, maybe with Anna too. She was in no way prepared for Steve Rogers to be standing on the front porch, looking at her with a grin stretching across his face.

Due to Howard’s overzealous use of the memory eraser, Peggy had no way of knowing that she herself had helped to rescue a still-frozen Steve just a week ago. All she could see was Steve, alive, standing on her doorstep and looking at her like it was only yesterday they had spoken over that unreliable radio. She supposed for him, if it really was him – and she wasn’t quite ready to believe it could be, it might as well have been. 

“Hi. I know you said 8, but-” he shrugged, “I was hoping I could still have that dance.”

She was frozen, speechless and trying to figure out why Steve being back felt somehow wrong when it should have been a cause for celebration by all accounts. The thought of telling him he was late, as they had both done before in turn, didn’t occur to her.

Steve took that time to look at her, truly look at her; it felt like he was home.

~~~~

Angie walked up the path to Peggy’s door, not quite sure what she was going to do. Declarations of undying love aside, she wanted to say goodbye to Peggy somehow, in a way which she would remember for however long they were going to be apart; she didn’t want any regrets. Truth be told, she wanted to kiss Peggy and then if it all went wrong, just… pretend it was a goodbye kiss on the lips or something. She winced internally, that was a weak excuse. But she was hopeful she wouldn’t have to give it; maybe she was reading into things, but the past month it had seemed a lot like Peggy was not-so-subtly flirting with her. And besides, if things did get awkward, they would soon be in different states and it would fade with time, hopefully. Angie tried to reassure herself that there was no bad outcome if she just... went for it. Her heart stuttered at the thought, but stopped abruptly as she arrived at the porch and was about to press the doorbell. Through the big bay windows out front she could see a tall blonde man in the living room with his back to her, dancing with someone. Her heart dropped through her chest. Despite the moment of denial that the someone wasn’t Peggy, then they turned and there was no mistaking it. As if she’d touched something unexpectedly hot, Angie jerked away and out of their sightline.

Angie knew she wasn’t entitled to Peggy’s undivided attention, but she’d thought they were closer than this. She had thought Peggy might have been flirting with her more and more for months. At the very least, she had thought Peggy would tell her if there was someone in her life like _that_. This was so very unexpected. Her mind ran through and re-evaluated every little moment she thought they’d shared together, every time Peggy had flirted with her and Angie had flirted back. Except apparently Peggy hadn’t been flirting, because she’d clearly been seeing _this_ guy for a while for them to be this close and intimately dancing in her living room.

If nothing else, Angie knew one thing in that moment; there was no way she was going to ring the doorbell and say goodbye to Peggy right now. Turning on her heel, Angie left before either of them knew she was there.

~~~~

As the song finished, before the next one could start, Peggy stepped away from Steve and lifted the needle from the record delicately.

“Not that I’m not pleased to see you, which I am, but-” she wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it.

“How am I alive? Where have I been since the plane went down?” He guessed, with a cheeky smile. He was still just so content to be here, with her and no war to worry about. He felt like he’d been given the gift of a second chance, with all the time in the world as a cherry on top.

“Something like that, yes.” Peggy folded her arms and stood leaning against the back of the sofa, watching him with an unreadable expression.

“Howard found me. I’m not really sure on the details,” he took a step towards Peggy, “but somehow, he figured out where I was and I guess… defrosted me?” Steve ran his hands down Peggy’s arms. “He’s even started calling me a Capsicle, but I can forgive him for that because he brought me back to you.” His tone went from playful to serious over those last few words.

Peggy met his gaze and for a moment, she remembered how it had felt to kiss him before he jumped aboard the Valkyrie. It seemed like a million years ago now.

She averted her gaze to the floor. If it had been six months ago, she would’ve been practically jumping for joy, or even a few weeks ago, when she had still thought of him with an ache in her chest. But it wasn’t; a lot had happened since then. She had finally let him go and started to move on; with work, with loving someone else, and with life getting back to some kind of normality after the official end of the war. Except now here he was, standing in the house she was about to leave, looking at her the same way he had over a year ago. But as much as she was grateful he was alive, something felt different. She knew she wasn’t the same person anymore; she felt like she’d aged 10 years in the past fortnight alone. She still loved him, but not in the same way she had before. And it hadn’t seemed to occur to him that maybe she didn’t want to just pick up where they left off. It was a strange thing, to lose someone like that, only to get them back again but with it all feeling different. Out of seemingly nowhere, the thought of Angie crossed her mind. 

She noticed a headache starting to form behind her temples.

“I think I need some time, to process-” Peggy rubbed the back of her neck, “all of this.”

Steve stepped back, “of course, Peg.” It was not exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for, but he smiled anyway. “Take as long as you need. I know it’s been longer for you than it has for me, even if everything seems so much the same.” He turned to leave, “Howard offered to put me up until I can get back on my feet again, so if you need to reach me.”

Peggy nodded as she walked with him to the door. “It’s good to see you, Steve.”

His hopeful smile returned, but she noticed that it hit her differently than it used to.

“You too, Pegs.”

He looked like he was about to try and kiss her or something, so she stepped back quickly. This was not how this was supposed to go. She felt almost guilty for not being the woman he knew.

With another smile, he left.

She closed the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment. Whatever else this meant, she was fairly certain she wasn’t going to LA anymore.

She couldn’t exactly jump on a plane across the country when Captain America had just come back from the dead.

~~~~

“I have an idea.” For some reason Howard couldn’t fathom, Peggy did not seem as excited about the prospect as he was.

“Do I need to get a new fire extinguisher? We used up the old one on your last idea,” she deadpanned.

Howard grinned, he’d forgotten about that.

“No, this one’s not combustible. I think, what with you not going to LA, and Steve being back… I think we should form our own, independent intelligence agency.”

Peggy blinked at him, “like, our own version of the FBI?”

Howard lifted his glass, “exactly!”

“Why…?”

“Well, when I was on trial I got to thinking. The government have their own agenda, and the SSR aren’t exactly treating you right. Plus, think of how much support we’d get with Captain America on our side!”

Peggy considered this for several moments. It did make a certain kind of sense.

“How would it work?”

“Well, you could be-“

“I meant, how would we set it up? We can’t exactly set up an independent intelligence agency without go through some kind of proper channel and having oversight, and if we need governmental approval to do it, they’re going to want a say in how it’s run and then what’s the point of it all?”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. I’ve got that part covered.” He winked, with a smug grin on his face. “Does this mean you’re on board?”

“It means, I’ll think about it,” she spoke nonchalantly, but her mind was going a mile a minute thinking strategy. And it would be good to get back in the field… Goodness knew her talents were not properly utilised at the SSR, and with Thompson in charge they probably never would be, moving to LA be damned.

~~~~

After the meeting with Howard, Peggy had a light bubble of hope flickering in her chest at the prospect of being able to do the work she wanted to do, to actually achieve things without having to fight tooth and nail for something her male colleagues at the SSR were given so often that they sometimes groaned ‘not another one, I’ve got a full workload Chief!’ It felt like a weight that had been getting heavier and heavier was slowly rising off her shoulders.

Which was all to do with work, she told herself, her newfound lightness nothing at all to do with the fact that now she was no longer headed to LA, she was planning to ask Angie to move in with her to Howard’s mansion. That place was way too big for just one person to occupy, she told herself. It was a rational choice for both of them, as Angie wouldn’t have to work at the diner as much, and she was just being a good friend. She would allow herself to be friends with Angie, even if nothing more could happen. The thought vanished as she pushed through the revolving door of the L&L and was greeted with the sight of Angie laughing at something one of her co-workers had said. Peggy didn’t even realise she was smiling until Angie turned and caught her eye.

Peggy approached the counter, “hi Angie.”

“English,” if Angie was surprised to see her she didn’t show it. “I thought you would’ve been halfway there by now.” Her tone was light, but not the same one she usually used with Peggy and Peggy noticed, but chalked it up to being down to something other than herself; Angie was always happy to see her.

“I’m not going,” she spoke with a wide smile as Angie started making her a cup of tea, her usual order. “I’m staying in New York; I’ve taken LA off the table.” She wasn’t sure what reaction she was expecting from Angie exactly, perhaps bubbly or excited, but definitely not the flat response Angie gave.

“That’s nice, Peggy. I’m happy for ya.”

As Angie started turning away to deal with another customer, everything about that interaction from the speed of Angie’s dismissal to using ‘Peggy’ instead of ‘English’, raised a bunch of red flags. Before Angie could leave, Peggy reached across the counter and touched her arm lightly.

“Angie?”

She turned back, but her eyes were cold. Devoid of the usual warmth she seemed to muster up especially for Peggy. “Something else I can get for you?”

Peggy recognised Angie’s customer service voice and it stopped her dead. Angie had never used that voice with her, not even the first time she’d walked into the L&L. It was like Angie had taken one look at her, decided they were going to be friends, and then they were; despite the initial resistance on Peggy’s part to avoid getting close to anyone. She had never experienced this side of Angie directed at her, and didn’t quite know what to do; friendships were not her strong suit, and she was very much out of practise, even though calling Angie just a friend didn’t feel like the right word at all.

When Peggy didn’t respond beyond looking shocked, Angie turned away again and went to serve other customers. She somehow managed to avoid going anywhere near Peggy for a good ten minutes, but when it looked like Peggy wasn’t leaving anytime soon, she asked Marlene to cover the last 20 minutes of her shift, changed and slipped out the back.

Only to find Peggy standing in the alley there, looking slightly confused and more than a little apprehensive.

“Are you in trouble, Angie?” Angie was torn between saying a curt ‘no’ and walking away down the street, asking Peggy ‘what the hell, are you blind English’, and just bursting into tears at all of it. Peggy took a small step closer as Angie stayed torn about what to do. “Is there something I can do?”

That was it. “I think you’ve done enough,” she snapped.

Peggy was taken aback, “I don’t know what-“

Angie didn’t want to hear it. “Why don’t you just go on back home to your boyfriend and leave me alone.” Angie started storming down the street, intending to make a dramatic exit, but her resolve faltered when Peggy touched arm as she passed, light as a feather. She stopped walking, but didn’t turn to face her.

“Angie, what are you talking about?” Her tone was soft, but that only made Angie angrier; how could Peggy treat her like a fool and then pretend she didn’t know what she’d done?

She took a moment, to level her voice and blink back the tears threatening to fall, before speaking. “Why don’t you tell me?” At the bewildered look on Peggy’s features, Angie whirled around and continued, “I get that you’re a private person, and you seem to want to keep everything to yourself, but you could’ve at least told me you were-“ Angie stopped talking suddenly, when she realised she was dangerously close to telling Peggy she loved her. Deep down, she was fully aware that that was the real cause of her heartbreak; she’d thought Peggy was different, but all she could see now was that she’d fallen for a straight woman, bound to have a husband and kids and-

For a split second, a light bulb seemed to click on over Peggy’s head and Angie was positive Peggy could read minds.

Peggy spoke quietly, sounding pained, “he’s not my boyfriend. We- we had something during the war but-” There was a distant look in her eye, before she met Angie’s fierce gaze again. “But that was a long time ago.” Her voice was almost down to a whisper. Why was everyone determined to drag up the past today… Some things should just be left well enough alone.

Angie’s shoulders seemed to soften a little. “Oh, I didn’t know that.” There was a moment of silence.

“So, he’s not the reason you’re staying in New York?”

Peggy hesitated, “he’s part of it, but not in the way that you think. He’s-” Peggy didn’t know how she was supposed to finish that sentence. “He’s Captain America,” she tried.

Angie froze for half a second. “But he died?” She hadn’t seen his face in Peggy’s window, but it couldn’t be, could it?

Peggy shook her head, her tone belied something Angie couldn’t read, “turns out he survived. And now he’s back. And he’s finding his feet after being frozen for a year and I’m helping him,” she held Angie’s gaze, “as a friend.”

“You sure seemed friendly.” Angie wasn’t quite ready to let it go, but her tone was less cold and almost teasing, which Peggy took as a good sign.

Peggy studied Angie for a moment, before catching her gaze and holding it for a moment, a serious look in her eyes.

“Angie, why do you care if he’s more than a friend?” Somehow she already knew the answer.

Angie wanted to just act indignant, but her cheeks were already turning a little pink and she knew it gave her away.

“I just-” this wasn’t the right time. “I just want you to stop being so secretive. Ya know? Tell me things, sometimes.” She took a breath and tried to channel the last acting lesson she’d had, “I care about you, Pegs.” That much was certainly true.

Peggy nodded and pretended to believe that was the entire reason, but there was part of her that wanted to press Angie for the whole truth. And to press her up against a wall sometimes, but that wasn’t relevant right now.

“I’ll try, to tell you things when I can.”

Angie arched an eyebrow at the stipulation, “uh huh,” but the anger had left her eyes and she seemed to be holding less tension in her shoulders.

“It’s the best I can do.”

Angie sighed, “what are we gonna with you, ey English?”

Peggy shrugged, “let me take you for dinner?” She smiled cheekily, head titled a little to the side as Angie rolled her eyes with a smile that made Peggy’s breath hitch.

Angie pretended to debate it for a moment before linking Peggy’s arm. “Let me pick the restaurant and you’re on.”

Peggy smiled, “it’s a deal.”

It didn’t seem like the right time to ask Angie to move in with her, but she could start building towards it tonight; her priorities hadn’t changed.

~~~~

_Four months later_

After a lot of preparation, and Howard pulling strings behind the scene whilst namedropping Steve as though he was the Shield mascot, which he practically was by now, they were almost ready to launch their new, independent intelligence agency.

The last step was having their photographs taken for their ID badges, and then a retinal scan for the security system which Howard was setting up personally; he didn’t trust anyone else with Shield’s security.

When it was time for her to have her picture taken for her ID, Peggy stepped in front of the camera and smiled. The photographer pressed the button; a bright light flashed as the photograph was taken and suddenly, Peggy’s memories of another life started coming back.


	7. Chapter 7

Peggy’s memories were coming back to her in a strange way. After initially being struck by a bunch of them like lightning flooding into her mind, still more were becoming available to her recollection as time passed. Some crept to her attention, whilst others seemed to shuffle themselves away until something brought them forward. Which she supposed was why there was one particular memory she didn’t recall until much later, when she was sitting in her dimly lit living room, nursing a glass of scotch and trying to organise her thoughts.

_Howard sat opposite her, refreshing his glass from a half drunk bottle of whisky, before leaning back in his chair._

_“I need your help.” He paused._

_It wasn’t like Howard to seem unsure how to proceed, or indeed, to give things any measure of thought before charging in head first._

_Peggy lifted an eyebrow, “care to elaborate?”_

_Howard was looking at her far too seriously for her liking._

_“I want to bring him home, Pegs. And I can’t do it alone.”_

_Peggy faltered in bringing the glass to her lips, before recovering and taking a sip. Since the incident in which Howard had almost dropped a bunch of rage-inducing gas on Times Square not too long ago, he hadn’t been able to let the idea go._

_“And how do you propose we accomplish that?” She was tired of talking him down from harebrained schemes, and it showed._

_“We can travel in time now. It would be the easiest thing in the world to go back and get him, before the plane crashes into the ice. Figure out a way to bring him back.”_

_Peggy considered this, along with what had happened last time they had tried travelling in time._

_“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Howard.” She took a breath. “I miss him too. You know I do. And the world would be a better place with him still in it, but we can’t take that chance. The risks are too high. He said himself he had to put the plane in the ice. Saving him would just mean someone else losing their life. Or saving the plane and-” A chill ran up her spine at the thought of the missiles on board actually being released and sent to their planned destinations, “all of its cargo. Besides, you’ve said yourself the pills will take a couple of years to reverse the effects of the radiation from last time. What if it happens again? Being stuck in limbo…” Peggy trailed off for a moment - the thought alone was a nightmare - before she cleared her throat, “it wouldn’t end well.”_

_Howard deliberated telling her that the pills he’d given her also had additional enhancements, which were making them both stronger. He even debated telling her that it’s what Steve would’ve wanted – but he knew that was a barefaced lie, and that she would see through it in an instant._

_“We need to let him go, Howard.” Despite having made some personal progress with that even before emptying the vial of Steve’s blood into the river not too long ago, she included herself in the statement; she didn’t want him to feel alone._

Back then, Howard had thought about what Peggy had said, but come to the conclusion that it was a risk worth taking anyway. So he had gone to his lab with a renewed sense of purpose, and started making plans and devising tests to run on his outcome-simulator. But Peggy didn’t know that.

At the time, she had simply supposed that Howard had accepted he wouldn’t be able to change her mind that night when he had proceeded to change the subject, as much as it had surprised her. The thought had even crossed her mind that it was possible he was taking a tiny step towards letting Steve go. But now she knew better than to stop paying attention when Howard didn’t get his way; though she would not have thought him capable of stooping low enough to do something like this. Perhaps because of what they’d been through side by side during the war, or because of how long they’d known each other, or maybe because just once she wanted to be able to let her guard down a little around the people she cared about. Either way, it wasn’t going to happen again.

Now she just had to figure out how to restore things back to the way they were before.

~~~~

Howard swung open the door to his current residence of choice, a modest apartment in the West Village, to find it was Peggy who had knocked.

“Hey Pegs, it’s good to see you. What can I do you for?” The carefully schooled look on her face told him it was unlikely to be a pleasant conversation.

He watched her strode past him in the room, “Information, as it happens. Is there anything you care to tell me?”

Howard was suddenly regretting getting an apartment on the fifth floor; it made it much more difficult to climb out the window to escape potentially dangerous situations. And from the way Peggy was looking at him, he was definitely in a dangerous situation.

“You know? How...”

She looked at him as though inspecting a particularly fascinating species of lizard and the silence stretched for a minute.

“It should have been my decision, Howard.”

Howard winced, shielding his face from the punch he expected. But none came. He lowered his hands and found Peggy simply staring at him coolly. She hadn’t even raised her voice.

“I know, Pegs. But do you remember I tried to tell ya?”

“I do. And I remember what my decision was; let me refresh your memory, I chose to not to change things, to stay here,” _with Angie,_ “both times.”

“You can still live your life exactly how it was then. But now Steve’s back too. I saved him Peg.” He caught her gaze and spoke with a child-like indignance, “this was the right thing to do!”

Peggy shook her head, “you’re not some kind of god, Howard. You don’t get to decide what’s right and wrong. And since when have you cared, anyway?”

Howard met her level gaze with a determined one of his own, “since we talked about going back for Steve, and we didn’t, because you decided we should just leave him in the ice. Because you thought that was the right thing to do. But I guess it’s different when it’s what you want? It’s different when it’s your guilt?”

Howard didn’t realise he had been raising his voice until he stopped talking. He sat down sullenly, looking for all the world like a sulking teenager who didn’t understand what they’d done wrong.

A thought occurred to Peggy. “How did you know where Steve was?” It was said with a tone that sent a shiver down his spine despite the mild temperature and the warm breeze drifting in through the open window.

He sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his forehead. “When we went to the future, the first time, I might’ve, sort of, checked it out.” When Peggy said nothing, he continued, “they found Steve in the early 2000s and when they defrosted him, he was alive. So, I went looking for him a few years early.”

Peggy looked at him. “ _Decades_ early,” she corrected with well-placed emphasis. “Everything you said, about preserving the integrity of the timeline. That was bullshit.” It was said matter of factly and he didn’t really have a leg to stand on.

“It… Okay, more or less.”

“But now, as it just so happens, you’ve actually screwed up the timeline, _monumentally_. When the future needs Captain America to be there, he won’t be anymore.” If there was anyone who could continually surprise her, it was Howard apparently. And she was not a fan of it. “You jeopardised the future, because you felt a little guilty?” Her voice was as cold as steel and cut just as deeply.

“A lot guilty, actually. And it was more than that. You don’t know-” He cut himself short as he saw his own actions as part of the bigger picture for the first time. Of course Peggy knew how it felt. He knew she carried the world on her shoulders like it has been Atlas’ day off every day since he’d known her. And she still would’ve made the right choice; she’d still even told him, twice, what the right choice was. Tense silence pervaded the air as Howard took a moment to reflect on what he’d done.

Peggy looked at him as if truly seeing him for the first time. With a look like that he was certain she could see into his soul.

“Goodbye, Howard.”

Howard sensed the finality of it, and panic flared in his chest; of all the reactions he had expected if she ever found out what he’d done, Peggy giving up on him like this hadn’t been one. “Peggy, wait-“

Later she would think maybe she had been a little harsh; some of that anger was misplaced sadness for the version of her life she’d lost.

But for now the door had already swung shut behind her.

“We can work through this!” He shouted at the door, but more through desperation than actually thinking it would work and she would come back. He wasn’t ready to run out of second chances.

The shout followed her down the hall and as she passed an elderly lady going into her apartment, the lady touched her arm.

“He’s not worth it dear.”

Peggy stopped and almost laughed at the absurdity of it all; this was just the icing on the cake.

She nodded and gave her the best smile she could manage at that particular moment. “You’re absolutely right.”

The lady nodded kindly and let go of Peggy’s arm. Peggy smiled back and went to find somewhere she could _think_.

~~~~

Sitting back at home, Peggy knew everything had to be undone. Again. The only way to restore things to how they were supposed to be was to put Steve back in the ice, which meant in turn, unfounding Shield and giving Angie up, again. She covered her eyes with her arm to block out the light briefly. Beginning a lot of things all over again… She tried to find the silver lining, thinking that perhaps a new start could be a good thing. But she was bone-tired of this.

For a moment, she wondered what would happen if they just, didn’t change it back. Or even if this was supposed to happen in some weird, paradoxical way. But Howard had known they would discover Steve in the future and she knew without a doubt that things would be drastically different if Steve was found early; he was bound to be important in future history. Besides, what if something happened to Steve before he could do any of the things he did in the future? No, he would have to be returned to the ice, there was no doubt about that.

She walked over to the liquor cabinet and poured herself two fingers of whiskey, knocking it back before pouring herself another which she took to the sofa to nurse. Peggy supposed she would probably be bored with a peaceful life anyway. The thought of Angie crossed her mind, with memories of lazy days spent curled up together and lazy kisses and not-so lazy nights; if a peaceful life was anything like that, it was more than a little tempting. 

Whichever way things were going to end up, there was only one way to get there. She tipped her glass back and finished her drink, before standing up and stretching. Howard wouldn’t be expecting her back this evening, which is why she had made a mental note of the window which was slightly ajar and would now be her entrance to his apartment.

She was going to steal the time travelling device.

~~~~

Considering Howard had designed the new security system for the White House after being cleared of the treason charges, it really was far too easy to break into his apartment. There was a split second when Peggy wondered if Howard had made it that way because he knew her well enough to guess what she was going to do. She filed the thought away for later, it wasn’t important.

Peggy didn’t bother leaving a note, by the time Howard would have noticed it was missing, they would already be in another timeline.

Soon enough, the time device was in her pocket, along with the memory eraser, and she was back out the window, climbing down an uneven part of the brick wall; it was times like this she was glad she had kept up her fitness, despite the near constant stream of desk work; she’d even beaten her personal best of 107 one armed push ups recently.

~~~~

Peggy returned things to the way they were supposed to be fairly quickly. She tried to say goodbye to Steve in a way that mattered, but wound up silently kissing his cheek and he seemed to understand what she couldn’t quite bring herself to say. He attempted to hide his disappointment at needing to go back in the ice, and failed miserably. But the look was gone and replaced with confusion once she zapped him with the memory eraser. Though it had taken a minute or two for him to fall unconscious, it wasn’t instantaneous as it should have been; Peggy supposed maybe that was a side effect of him being a super solider. Either that or Howard had made some alterations to the memory eraser device, hopefully including some adjustment to avoid flashes of light bringing a person’s memories back, which would be for the best; there were probably flashes of light in the future and this wasn’t an experience Steve would particularly enjoy remembering – who wants to come back from being thought dead only to be rejected and sent to sleep for another 70 years?

Peggy didn’t dwell on it; she’d always been good at keeping herself busy. An old fighter pilot friend of hers dropped them at the Valkyrie crash site where they left Steve as he’d been found, and then she flew Peggy back to New York afterwards, under the radar. But Peggy, after being so recently burned by misplaced faith, didn’t trust her friend enough not to wipe her memory of the trip, just in case. Peggy took a second to really hope that the memory eraser didn’t have any undiscovered side effects.

Now she just had to get back to where she’d left off in 1948.

~~~~

Without specifically planning to – the dials on the time travel device were a little too fiddly for that kind of preciseness over longer stretches of time - Peggy realised she’d arrived back in 1948 shortly before her other self from this timeline was being kidnapped by Howard and Jarvis. Time travel was not the easiest thing to wrap her mind around, but it didn’t matter now; she was back, and she could pick up right where she left off. If she dashed home quickly, Angie hopefully wouldn’t be too annoyed at her for suddenly disappearing. If she was really lucky and super quick, Angie might not even have time to notice at all.

She was halfway home, hurrying down the sidewalk and trying to recall as many memories as she could from the past few days in this timeline, when someone grabbed her arm firmly. She reflexively went to swing a punch at whoever had grabbed her, but paused in the nick of time when she recognised who it was.

“Daniel?”

“Hi Peggy, no time to chat I’m afraid, we need to head back to base asap. I’ll explain on the way.” The urgency in his voice didn’t leave much room for protest.

Along the way, Daniel told Peggy about a contact he had working in the government, who’d let him know that some supposedly important inspector was going to be dropping in on Peggy tomorrow, with the aim of coming up with reasons why she wasn’t fit to be the Director of Shield; reason number one being that she was an unmarried woman. Apparently this was the last hurdle before Shield would be green lit. Peggy would have sighed at the ridiculousness of the idiots in charge, but she had almost forgotten they were in the process of setting up Shield in this timeline and it caught her off guard. She wondered for a moment what other little nuggets she had temporarily forgotten which could bite her in the ass.

Daniel’s contact had been charged with finding Peggy’s address by his boss, but Daniel gave them the address of one of the SSR’s safe houses and that had been step one. For the rest of the morning they worked on a convincing cover story, even borrowing a camera from an amateur photographer in the science division, they took pictures together to put up around the house they would be pretending was their own. One of the other agents even forged them a marriage certificate; no detail was left unchecked. Peggy suddenly appreciated how they had come together to pull this off. Probably for their own reasons too, as they would probably be coming to her for a job if the SSR went out of commission which there were wildfire rumours about, but nevertheless, it meant something to her that her colleagues had her back.

As they worked, Daniel and Peggy told each other surface personal information which might be asked of them by the inspector, things married people typically knew about each other; it was all a bit of a whirlwind, but she kept the thought of Angie at the forefront of her mind; contacting her was Peggy’s next top priority, to stop Angie from worrying about her sudden disappearance.

When she had a moment to spare, Peggy tried to call Angie at the house, but she didn’t pick up. Little did she know that Angie was currently talking to her brother’s friend, trying to convince him to use his contacts in the Mafia to find someone for her. Determined to get a message to Angie somehow, Peggy tore a strip of paper from an outgoing report and hastily wrote a note to Angie, telling her not to worry and she would be back as soon as she could. She folded it up and wrote Angie’s name on the front. She figured Daniel was the obvious messenger as he was the only one she trusted not to read it and whomever he passed it to would have enough respect not to read it if it came from him; it was Rose’s day off and she wasn’t about to call Jarvis to ask him to deliver a note for her when as far as he knew she was currently being carted off to 1946.

As Daniel stood up and went to leave the room Peggy intercepted him, “I need to get a message to Angela Martinelli, the address is on the front. Can you make sure this reaches her as soon as possible? Through whichever junior agent you trust.”

Daniel nodded, took the folded up paper hastily and put it in his jacket pocket before grabbing his crutches, intending to pass it to one such agent in the office on their way out, for him to deliver it personally. He was approaching their desk when the phone rang; it was his contact. Following a quick update and a hurried conversation, Peggy and Daniel left for the safe house in such a rush it slipped his mind completely. He would remember the note was there a week later, when it came back from the drycleaners as a stiff wad of paper in his pocket with any trace of legible ink long gone.

It was at this very moment that Angie was across town in the South Bronx, hammering on a door hard enough to wake the departed. Dottie smiled behind the door for a moment, she already knew it was Angie beating down her door and this time, everything was going to go perfectly. She schooled her features and opened the door to find Angie, who accused her of kidnapping Peggy; just like she had done before Dottie went back in time, though Angie didn’t know that. If she had done, there was not a snowball’s chance in hell that she would have offered to owe Dottie a favour in exchange for her help. She might also have known that this series of events had been orchestrated by Leviathan, and specifically designed to get Angie indebted to Dottie. Though she wouldn’t have known the specifics of how, like that Daniel’s contact was a Leviathan agent, and that the series of events she was living through had been very carefully planned. But only Dottie knew all of those things, thanks to Howard’s time travel device and a little bit of thievery on her part. Peggy’s hiding places were good, but she was better. Dottie smirked.

Dottie completely suppressed a triumphant smile in favour of that sickly sweet Dottie Underwood voice Angie thought was her own, as Angie offered to owe her a favour if she helped her to find Peggy. Having the upper hand was almost too easy with foresight, but she was still going to enjoy it.

~~~~

_A few hours later_

Five floors below an SSR safe house on the Upper West side, Angie was walking away from the lobby, thinking Peggy was leading a double life. Angie was right, but not in the way she thought she was.

At the same time in the safe house, Peggy was restless and had taken to fidgeting in her seat at the table set for lunch.

“Would you relax? It’s just an inspection; we’ll pass it, easy as pie. We look for all the world like a happy family.” He wasn’t wrong; Angie had fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

She took a breath, forced a smile and tried not to snap at Daniel in front of his kids, “easy for you to say, it’s not your career on the line.”

He looked at her, “we’ve got this, right guys?”

The twins nodded, too young to be entirely trusted with the details what was going on, but happy enough to sit still for a little while after being bribed that they wouldn’t have to eat broccoli today. They munched away at the food on their plates and a few more tense minutes went by.

“Are you sure they’re coming today?”

“My contact said it was good intel, I’m just trying to err on the side of caution here.”

Not for the first time, even in that day, Peggy was reminded of how pointless and _annoying_ the patriarchy was. But when the plan to put together a new intelligence agency needed some support to get off the ground, she supposed she could suffer through pretending to be married to Daniel Sousa and step-mother to his children for the duration of a lunch whilst a ‘surprise’ inspection was conducted to check that if the new Director of the agency had to be a woman (which Howard had insisted it did. As has Peggy, but that didn’t seem to hold much water with them much to Peggy’s perpetual annoyance), that she was at least a married woman. She was sick and tired of jumping through hoops in order to live her life, but she would be damned if she was going to let anyone prevent her finally rising to a position where she would be able to do some real good, and affect real positive change.

It also didn’t help that the first thing she’d wanted to do when she got back, was find Angie. But she’d been interrupted by this supposedly more pressing matter by Sousa and his contact; a contact who had a very different agenda to Peggy and Sousa’s.

Peggy stabbed a potato on her plate with unnecessary vitriol and lunch continued in silence.

A little while later, Daniel’s contact called again, letting them know that the inspection was off; the inspector had been called away at the last minute and was currently on a train headed out of the state, so there was no longer any need for their charade for now.

Peggy breathed a sigh of relief, she could finally go home.

~~~~

Peggy wasn’t expecting things to be easy when she got in, but this was far more drastic than she anticipated. She swung the front door shut behind her and stared at Angie’s suitcase sitting in the hallway for a moment.

“Angie?” Peggy dropped her bag and keys on the hall table and stepped into the living room, sure enough Angie was sitting there, with a glass of peach schnapps in her hand and a nearly empty bottle on the table beside her. “Are you going somewhere?”

Angie turned to face her coolly. “That depends.”

“On..?”

“You.” Angie’s gaze was unreadable, but aimed at Peggy with an intensity she didn’t know what to do with. “I’m not interested in your secrets anymore, English. Tell me what’s going on.” It was half a threat, hanging over Peggy like the sword of Damocles; except she felt completely powerless to stop whatever had somehow started into motion in her absence.

As she neared the sofa, Peggy saw an overnight bag on the seat next to Angie, the handle grasped firmly in her other hand.

 _Fuck_.

Peggy looked at her almost pleadingly, “I- I can’t Angie.” She kept her gaze level, as though she could convey everything she was feeling with just that look. “It’s the nature of my work… And it’s for your protection too.” The truth sounded like a weak excuse, even to her own ears.

Angie considered Peggy for a moment, then put her glass down carefully on the table. “Then I guess you can consider this me protecting myself.”

Without glancing back Angie stood up, walked past Peggy and out of the door, her resolve fuelled by the image of Peggy playing happy families earlier, which had been stuck in her mind since she’d seen it.

“Angie, wait, please, I-“

Peggy wanted to run after her, but she couldn't get her legs to move; she was stuck. She didn’t know what good it would do or what to say when Angie needed the one thing Peggy couldn’t give her, the complete truth. No small part of her wanted to bend her rule, or find some way to break it completely and still keep Angie safe, but if there was a way to do that, Peggy was sure she would have figured it out by now. Colleen was not the only one who had paid a steep price for her to learn that lesson, and Angie being gone and safe was better than Angie being here with her and unsafe.

Secrets, especially Stark’s secrets, always seemed to cost her more than she was prepared to lose.

For a moment, she seriously considered using the time travel device to rewind the day and figure out some way to stop whatever had taken Angie from being in love with her, to not wanting to live in the same house as her. But she would never actually do it, Angie’s reasons were valid and Peggy seemed determined to be a martyr.

Peggy climbed the stairs silently, trying not to think about how the house seemed emptier now than it had before she’d moved in. She went to put the time travel and memory eraser devices away safely in the secret compartment of her dresser, when she froze. Between the different time periods and her memories coming back in pieces, she had completely forgotten about the only other thing she’d kept in there, tucked away safely so Angie wouldn’t find it by accident. She took out the small velvet box, and snapped it open. The engagement ring was still there, with it’s stones twinkling even in the low light of the approaching dusk, and the sapphires still the exact same shade of blue as Angie’s eyes. For the first time in longer than she cared to remember, Peggy felt tears prick at her eyes, and not for the first time, she cursed Howard’s stupid time travel invention.


	8. Chapter 8

Although Angie had left with her bags, Peggy still held onto a flicker of hope. Because Angie had a lot of things, and she hadn’t taken them all. It might’ve been because she just couldn’t carry it all in one trip, or because she didn’t have a new place sorted yet, but there was still a slim chance than Angie just needed some time and space to cool off, and then she would come back. It was a comforting thought which kept Peggy from staying too late at the office, in case she missed Angie coming back, and kept her distractedly trying to figure out how to keep Angie in her life but firmly separate from her work, when her work was her life.

Peggy held onto that hope and allowed it to blossom, right up until she came home from work one afternoon three weeks later and found Angie’s brother outside, loading a box of her things into the van he used for work. From the look he gave her, she didn’t need to check to know that the rest of Angie’s things were already in that van. He gave her Angie’s key and said if he’d taken anything of hers by mistake, to ring up and he’d bring it back as soon as he could.

With Angie gone and Leviathan underground for a suspiciously long while, Peggy had little reason to stay in New York. With the way things were in government, and how little she trusted Howard right then, Shield would take at least another year to set up properly.

This time, Peggy approached Thompson with the idea of moving to LA. He agreed and she was gone within a month of Angie moving out. That house was really just too big for one person, and too full of memories.

~~~~

_Four years later_

Time moved quickly in LA, and faster still once Shield was up and running and based out of DC. But then the time came to expand their operation and she decided it was time to move back to NYC and officially make use of her corner office at their recently fortified new HQ. Between persistent threats, missions abroad and a carousel of new colleagues, some of whom she actually liked, Peggy barely realised the time had gone. Until she saw an advert for a show opening soon on Broadway starring Angela Martin, and it was accompanied by a picture of Angie’s face. A feeling she couldn’t think to put a name to, knocked the breath clean out of her lungs.

~~~~

Angie’s heart was full and she was bubbling with excitement; tonight had gone off perfectly, just perfectly. All the nerves and the rehearsals and the many, many auditions along the road had all been worth it for this feeling, right now. She’d come a long way from that first disappointing show.

Angie burst into her dressing room, fresh from a standing ovation and a performance high enhanced by all the congratulations she’d received backstage once the curtain went down. But she stopped abruptly at the sight in front of her; there was a fresh bouquet of lilies and peonies on her dresser, which hadn’t been there at the interval. She almost squealed, rushing over to read the card and see who they were from. Having adoring fans like this that sent her flowers was something she could get used to, though it was much more likely to be from her family, as they hadn’t made it to her opening night this time but had promised to come along next week.

Before she had taken more than two steps, a voice spoke softly behind her, “you were amazing tonight.”

Angie froze, she would always know that voice anywhere. “English?” She turned slowly and whispered, as though if she spoke too loud it would become an illusion and shatter like the glass from one of the stage lights which had exploded into a thousand pieces on the stage last week. Thankfully no one had been hurt. 

Peggy smiled softly at her from the other side of the room, where she was leaning against the wall like this was an everyday occurrence; like they had actually had any form of contact in the past 1483 days. Not that either of them were counting. 

“Hi, Angie.”

“How…” her breath hitched, “what are you doing here?”

“Well, security’s not exactly top notch in this building…” she trailed off, deflecting from Angie’s real meaning, _why didn’t you just tell me the truth four damn years ago and why are you here now_. Angie tilted her head as Peggy cleared her throat, “and I- I wanted to see you.” Peggy took half a step towards her, hoping Angie wouldn’t step back; she didn’t move. There was a moment when Angie just looked at Peggy, and Peggy for the life of her, couldn’t figure out what she was thinking. But she didn’t have to wait long for a clue.

“I think you should go.” Her tone was neutral, the kind someone would use to politely say thank you to an overworked barista who’s gotten their order wrong.

It wasn’t quite the reaction she’d been hoping for, but Peggy understood it nonetheless. Four years was a long time to disappear from someone’s life; she would know, she’d thought of Angie every day since she’d seen her last.

But apparently it was not quite long enough for those kind of wounds to heal.

Peggy looked at her carefully.

“If you change your mind, my number’s on the card.” And with that she left, without looking back. Just like Angie had left their house so long ago and Peggy hadn’t even bothered to talk to her after, let alone stay in contact. Until now, apparently.

Angie took a while to process it. She went from being relieved Peggy was okay, to being angry at her for coming back, to being even angrier that Peggy hadn’t fought for them then and she wasn’t truly fighting for them now, to feeling a familiar ache in her chest and just wanting to run into Peggy’s arms and forget they had ever been apart. It was an emotional journey she wanted to remember for future auditions. There had to be some use for this pain.

But everything was different now. Angie tried to remind herself of that when her fingers itched to pick up the phone and ring Peggy. She got as far as lifting the earpiece, but something stopped her from dialling even the first number; she came with a lot of other things too now, and it would put Peggy in harm’s way. It was a cruel irony that she truly understood in that moment, without a shadow of a doubt, why Peggy had been so adamant about continually pushing Angie away from her secrets. She’d been at this game a lot longer than Angie had, and those walls were there for good reason. Not for the first time, Angie allowed herself a moment to regret leaving Peggy and their life together the way she had, if she could do it over now there were a lot of things she would’ve done differently. But really, it was also for the best. She’d been doomed from the moment she had offered Dottie a favour. Angie put the receiver back and rested her hand in her hands. She wasn’t the Angie that Peggy had known. A lot of things were different, sure she was a working actress now and- Her train of thought was interrupted as the phone rang, and for a bizarre moment, she thought it might have been Peggy calling; she picked up almost breathlessly. But the voice at the other end was a man’s and he was speaking at her very fast.

Angie involuntarily straightened her back and listened intently. Phone calls like this were rare, but unfortunately important. When he was finished, the line went dead without so much as a ‘do svidanya’. After her first and apparently last Broadway engagement, it seemed Angie was now going to be heading to Hollywood.

A weight settled in the pit of her stomach; her dream was ending before it had even started to feel real. She took a bottle of schnapps out from where she kept it, hidden behind her mirror, and poured herself a glass. She couldn’t see a way out of this, but continuing living like this wasn’t an option either. Knowing she didn’t have to get up before noon tomorrow, Angie knocked it back and poured herself another glass. She knew it was every struggling performer’s dream to be where she was now and where she was going. But she didn’t want any of it, not like this.

This was costing her everything.

~~~~

It had started two years ago, in the ensemble dressing room of the first proper acting job she’d ever got.

Angie was the last one there that night. She hadn’t had the energy to be around the rest of the cast after such a disappointing turnout for the show tonight. So she’d waited a while on the stairs by the fire escape and looked at the clouds hiding the stars from her view. When she finally got to the dressing room, even the technicians had left. She flicked the light back on and sat down at her little dresser. All the dressers were side by side in a long row, each made distinct by having their own mirror, surrounded by little light bulbs which used to make her feel like a star. But that was during rehearsals, before the show had started tanking after the lead had broken her leg before the very first show and no one was buying tickets anymore. Angie was trying to find her make-up remover amongst the organised mess of bottles and things that were spread across her little table when she heard a fake voice that was unfortunately still all too familiar to her.

“Hi Angie.”

Angie didn’t even turn. That sickly sweet act was trying on the best of days. And right now she was too downtrodden to question or care why Dottie was here now.

“Dot.”

At least, she didn’t care until those next few words raised her blood pressure through the roof.

“I’ve come to collect.”

Angie’s heart got stuck in her throat. She swallowed, and tried to see it as an acting opportunity – staying calm under pressure; never let the enemy see you’re scared. She almost snorted, like she would even have an acting career after this disaster of a show. But she played it cool anyway.

“So, you finally decided what you want?” Dottie had been dragging it out since the day they’d seen Peggy playing happy families; it might’ve been only a couple of years, but it seemed like a lifetime ago now. Since she had stopped living with Peggy, time seemed to move a whole lot more slowly.

“I did.” She appeared behind Angie in the mirror she was looking at to take her make-up off. “Well? Aren’t you going to ask me what it is?”

Angie sighed internally, still not quite sure what exactly Dottie got from these pointless games.

“What favour did you want from me, Dot?”

“I want _you_ ,” she punctuated the word with a flick of one of Angie’s curls, “to accept this acting job.” She put a crisp white envelope on Angie’s dresser in front of her.

Angie frowned, there’s no way Dottie would make her wait for this long, only to come up with something small and simple enough to fit into an envelope. She didn’t know it would be anything but. 

“That’s it? You’ve finally succumbed to my charms as an actress?” She deadpanned. There was no way it was this easy. It was probably be an ‘acting job’ of providing a distraction for a heist or driving a getaway car or something, knowing Dottie and her tricksiness.

Except she didn’t actually know Dottie all that well, and had severely underestimated her.

“Well, I do think you’re perfectly qualified. And it’s the role of a lifetime…”

Angie looked at her suspiciously, but picked up the envelope nonetheless and opened it carefully.

She read the letter. Then she read it again.

This wasn’t happening.

How could this be happening?!

“ _That’s_ what you want in exchange?” Angie looked up, almost surprised to find that Dottie hadn’t disappeared into the darkness already. “You want me,” she lowered her voice to a whisper and hissed, “to be a _spy_?”

“We need intel,” Dottie shrugged, “what better way to get it than straight from an American; bypass all those nasty little trust issues left over from the war. Besides, you’re the perfect candidate. You already have a whole life of history here which the paparazzi will eat up when Leviathan pull the right strings to make you a famous actress; perfectly positioned to get all kinds of interesting information.”

“But-“

Dottie smirked, “you did say anything but murder.”

“But this is worse! This is –it’s-“

“What you signed up for? Oh Angie, I’m not your babysitter. Go find someone else’s shoulder to cry on. A deal’s a deal,” she shrugged, “I’ll be in touch.” Dottie stopped just short of the exit, “there will be perks, you know. They want someone who knows all the secrets. And they’re in a position to get you right to the top where you’ll hear them all; the upper echelons of society. You’ll be a household name in no time, if you’re into that sort of thing-”

“And a traitor.” The words left her mouth in a whisper. She would’ve spat them with venom, but suddenly the little energy she’d had left after the show had been sucked out of her.

Dottie said nothing else, leaving as silently as she had entered.

Angie sank into a chair and allowed herself to cry for the first time in a long time.

Apparently her dreams were going to come true, but at what cost? Not for the first time, Angie missed Peggy. She would never have approved of this. But then, she probably wouldn’t have found herself in a situation like this anyway, Angie thought ruefully.

And just like that, Angie’s life was no longer her own. Sure, she could technically do as she pleased, come and go as she liked and things like that, but under the very real threat that if she didn’t also do what Leviathan wanted, when they wanted her to and how, it would cost her dearly; Dottie had made that much clear.

Things started to change slowly. She got a call from some agent asking to sign her on, as though she had a choice, and then she was told to create a stage name – Angela Martin seemed the logical option, and in no time at all she started getting more call-backs and more offers. Until soon enough, just as Dottie had predicted, Angie was a lead performer in sell out shows, it was off-Broadway, but with the way her career was swinging up the way it was, it seemed like it was only a matter of time for she got the call she had been dreaming of since she was a kid playing dress up in her father’s Sunday best.

After what felt both like two long years and no time at all since Dottie had approached her, Broadway had called. It was bittersweet, knowing that it wasn’t purely her talent that had got her there, but she decided to try and make the most of it. After all, Leviathan might be getting her into these roles and shows, but she was the one on stage making the audience fall in love with her and selling out every night. And now she was in negotiations for a next role of a lifetime, even though it was the opening night of her current show on Broadway. It was the kind of busy schedule most acting professionals dreamed of. Between that and only the very occasional word explicitly from Leviathan since Dottie’s visit, it almost all seemed like it had been a bad dream.

Except even now, two years later, Leviathan was always in the back of her mind, and she could never just let go and relax. Her life was as much of an act as her performances on stage; only in private did she have any kind of reprieve from knowing no one was watching or listening in. She had a nagging feeling Leviathan was checking up on her more often than not.

Then the curtain had gone down on the standing ovation, and Angie had gone back to her dressing room to find Peggy waiting for her. It was a dream to see her again, and a nightmare to know that Leviathan would expect her to report this. But she wasn’t going to.

She would keep Peggy safe, consequences be damned.

Though apparently Peggy seemed to have different ideas about the ideal amount of space there should be between them.

_Two days later_

Angie looked at the fresh bunch of peonies waiting for her in her dressing room when the show was over, it was the third day in a row of Peggy sending her various bunches of flowers all accompanied by a sweet little note, and she couldn’t help smiling at them. She’d forgotten how damn charming Peggy Carter could be when she wanted to.

But the thought which really made her grin, was that Peggy was no doubt sneaking in every night during the second act less than gracefully, past security, in order to leave them waiting for her at the end of the show. She was half tempted to try and catch her in the act.

~~~~

Across town in the new Shield headquarters, Peggy was also smiling and thinking about Angie. Right up until Howard threw a paper ball at her.

Her gaze snapped to him. It had been a long time since he’d been brave enough to do that. It’d also been a long time since he’d royally fucked up four years ago. But when approval for Shield came through, Peggy had decided to be mature, to put aside their differences and let bygones be bygones. Life was short, but she was damn well going to make the most of it and being the Director of Shield was the best way to make that happen. Though she would probably never trust Howard much again; which is why she was Director and he was Head of Research and Development. And a figurehead for the boys in Washington.

And throwing paper balls at her.

He grinned at her, as though they were still friends.

“Can I help you, Howard?” She spoke smoothly, cool and professional. Even though he was being purposefully annoying.

“The new toys are ready in the lab. I know you wanted to see ‘em when they were ready.” His hands were in his pockets, belying his awkwardness underneath an outwardly confident façade. He knew her well enough to know that Peggy could see through it, but he put it on anyway.

Half his life seemed to be showmanship.

Peggy nodded, “thank you for letting me know. I’ll be down shortly.”

Howard seemed like he was about to say something more, but Peggy had turned back to the papers in front of her. He left and she sighed.

It was progress, on both sides. Two steps forward and one step back, but still overall forward movement nonetheless.

How difficult things were these days, only served as a reminder of how much easier they had been before.

She allowed herself a moment to recollect her thoughts, then turned back to the report she was halfway through reading, only to find her thoughts drifting again. It seemed she couldn’t stop thinking about Angie. She really had been phenomenal up on that stage. Before she could talk herself out of it, Peggy decided to leave only slightly after the rest of the office for once. She grabbed her coat and headed for the door.

~~~~

It wasn’t unusual for Angie to get in to the theatre early. She liked to have time to herself after putting on her costume and after someone from the make-up department, usually Lizzie, had come and gone and she could just, breathe a little, before the show started. Except somehow today she didn’t think she’d have time for that.

She unlocked her dressing room door, looking down at the floor as she thought about the exciting new project she was about to half-heartedly decline, when she saw a pair of legs, crossed at the knee. 

She would know those legs anywhere. She looked up, to have her suspicions confirmed.

Angie’s heart fluttered in her chest. “English,” she breathed, all attempt at keeping her tone neutral gone. But she covered quickly and put on her best poker face. It seemed that neither time nor distance was ever going to stop her loving Peggy. But Peggy didn’t need to know that.

“We can’t keep meeting like this?”

Peggy was sitting at her dresser, smiling at her like she had over half a Rhubarb pie and a bottle of schnapps years ago back at the Griffith. It was the same smile Peggy had given her when she woke up before Angie, which was most of the time, and Angie had looked up at her with sleep-filled eyes and kissed her clumsily before burying her head in Peggy’s side and trying to go right back to sleep. It felt like a million years ago and no time at all; the thought occurred to Angie that they’d been apart now for longer than they’d been together. For a moment reality paused and she felt as though, if she let it happen, things could go right back to that; a part of her ached for it. But now she was stuck helping Leviathan and Peggy was still probably trying to save the world somehow and she just wanted to collapse into Peggy’s arms and actually feel safe for once. But she didn’t.

Peggy noticed the shift across Angie’s face and was in front of her in a moment, holding a hand to her arm and daring herself not to get any closer.

“Angie?”

All of a sudden, everything was all too much. Angie was blinking back tears, but the softness of Peggy’s tone had her taking a small step to close the distance between them and letting the tears fall as Peggy wrapped her arms around her and held her close.

She would have to try and figure out how Peggy could put that much emotion into a single utterance of her name.

They stood like that for a little while as Angie’s tears dried up and Peggy rubbed soothing circles over her back.

“I’m- I’m sorry for leaving.” She looked up at Peggy with watery eyes and sniffed.

“You don’t need to be, darling. It was my fault; I know I keep a lot of secrets and I can understand how that must hurt.” _Even if it’s only to keep you safe._

Angie almost laughed, “yeah, next time just tell your mistress you’re married.”

Peggy’s hand stilled as she leaned back and tried to catch Angie’s eye, “Angie, what on _earth_ are you talking about?”

Angie looked at her, but before she could retort, there was a knock on the door.

“Miss Martin? 30 minute call.” A voice shouted.

“Thanks Benny,” Angie called back through the door.

“I suppose I should let you get to work,” Peggy stepped back and looked at Angie with an unreadable expression, before wiping a tear off Angie’s cheek with her thumb.

“I suppose.” Angie smiled at her and Peggy realised she had missed it like a plant in the desert misses water.

Peggy spoke before she could allow herself to hesitate; fighting international criminal organisations didn’t make her as nervous as Angie did right then. “I could stay until the intermission, if you want?”

Angie seriously debated it; she really didn’t want Peggy to leave yet.

“Are you sure no one saw you come in?”

“I was like a thief in the night,” she whispered dramatically.

Angie grinned, “oh yeah, still sneaking around on the side of buildings?”

“Only on special occasions,” Peggy smiled, “like when delivering flowers to supremely talented and accomplished actresses.” Her tone was playful, but Angie knew the compliment was sincere.

Angie rolled her eyes and didn’t bother hiding her smile, “shut up English, you talk too much.”

Just like that, any distance still between them disappeared and it’s as though they’re back in their shared home again, curled up on the sofa together and talking about their respective days.

For the first time in a long time, Angie thinks that maybe things will work out alright.

~~~~

When she got home that night, Angie lay in bed for a while, thinking. With things becoming more and more in perspective, she can’t think why she hasn’t put up more of a fight against Hayseed and Leviathan before; her mama didn’t raise a quitter and she wasn’t about to start being one now. Angie squared her jaw determinedly. It was time to find out more about this secret organisation, and find a way out of it. A half formed plan interspersed with thoughts of Peggy made their way into her dreams as she drifted off to sleep. 


	9. Chapter 9

The very next day, Dottie was in Angie’s dressing room when she returned for the interval rest break, which was worrying enough by itself, but to see her looking so gleeful elevated in her mind the seriousness of Dottie’s sudden appearance to a red flag the size of Russia. But still, Angie was cautiously optimistic, and trying not to show it; she didn’t think she’d be able to get information about Leviathan so soon.

“What do you want?”

Dottie tutted, “is that any way to treat an old friend?”

“I’ll remember that when I see an old friend,” she deadpanned.

Dottie looked at her curiously for a moment, before turning back to gleeful.

Angie sat in front of her dresser and waited for the inevitable request that she already knew from Dottie’s face that she wasn’t going to like.

“I’ve got an assignment for you, this one’s reconnaissance.” She dropped a packet on Angie’s dresser, and Angie waited for the other shoe to drop. “The target’s details are enclosed.”

Recon. That was surely a good chance to learn some more… If really weird. She wasn’t exactly a trained spy, she just did her acting thing and went to certain parties to talk to certain people and report back what they’d said, although she always tried to give an edited version – she didn’t know what information they were after, so she gave them as little as she could without risking blowback onto the people she loved for ‘noncompliance’ as Dottie called it.

Angie kept her voice level, almost snappy, to make sure Dottie’s suspicions weren’t raised; if nothing else, she was sure she wasn’t supposed to enjoy these assignments.

“Anything else you want?”

“Nope.” That sickly sweet smile really did make Angie deeply uncomfortable, but thankfully Dottie didn’t seem to be in the mood to stick around any longer - not that she ever was. “I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.” And with that vaguely threatening goodbye, Dottie was gone.

 _Not if I see you first_ Angie thought, and picked up the packet, intrigued. This was the first thing Leviathan had directly asked of her beyond going to parties and taking acting jobs they seemed to push at her; goodness knew why those specifically. She mostly just seemed to pretend to be in love with two guys and unable to choose until something happened to one of them and she wound up with the other. She really hoped the writing got better soon; there was nowhere to go from here but up.

Inside the packet was a black balaclava, along with a plain white card with printed black ink as if from a typewriter, which said simply, _Thursday, 11:15pm, the Stork Club. Be discreet._ She guessed that meant she was supposed to wear black and hide in a closet or something.

She still was wondering how exactly she was supposed to be discreet when Thursday rolled around. But she needn’t have bothered; it appeared the club was closed tonight anyway. Maybe there was a clandestine meeting she was supposed to listen in on? Whatever it was, Angie was fairly certain she was not the best person Leviathan could have put on this job. She went around the back of the building and pulled the balaclava out of her bag. She put it on and climbed over the fence separating the club from the residential area behind it. It was a lot more difficult that climbing trees had been when she was younger, but she managed; although it was not as pain-free as she would have preferred, when she caught her top on a wire sticking out at the bottom and it sliced right through her arm, leaving a long bleeding scratch. She wondered for the umpteenth time why someone – Dottie probably - had decided, of all the actual trained Leviathan agents, this was a job for her, the not-spy-trained actress. Then it dawned on her that it was probably because she was expendable, and she tried to stop thinking about it.

“It’s only recon. You got this Martinelli.” She whispered to herself, and went to find a way into the building.

~~~~

Peggy had cracked the Stork Club office safe, only to find it full of old newspaper clippings. In the muted light from her torch, she could just about make out that they all seemed to be about Captain America. Then she saw the print date in the by-line and stopped cold. They were from the future.

Downstairs, Angie had found a way in and crept around the bar of the dark, empty club, trying to figure out what reconnaissance she was supposed to be doing; did they want a map of the club’s interior or what? She bumped into a chair and winced at the loud scraping sound of wood on wood which broke the eerie silence. She was suddenly thankful she was alone, but then the thought occurred to her that maybe she wasn’t. She swallowed, there was only one way to find out.

Peggy heard a noise downstairs and decided it was time to go. She quickly emptied the contents of the safe into a bag as quietly as she could; she could figure out this enigma later.

Angie was about to go past the stairs and out the back door, when she steeled her nerves. If there was someone here, they would most likely be upstairs. A strong hope sat in her chest that maybe there would also be something she could trade from her freedom. Hollywood be damned, she’d make it on her own or not at all.

Peggy stood stock still behind the office door with her torch flicked off and stored safely in her pocket, and a stapler in her hand. She kept her breathing quiet, until she heard the faint sound of light footsteps coming up the stairs. Peggy hoped the person wasn’t planning to go into the office; but she was fresh out of luck.

As the door was pushed open, Peggy swung the stapler. Only the person was a lot shorter than she had expected and before she could redirect her swing, they were able to duck out of the way; but they were not prepared for what came next. Peggy aimed low and kicked her opponent’s leg out from under them; they landed with a thud and in an instant, Peggy had them pinned to the ground. It was then she could just about see in the darkness, that they had weirdly familiar bright blue eyes, and were wearing a balaclava. This was all very odd. No Leviathan agents she’d encountered before had worn balaclavas. Peggy almost sighed, another group of bad guys would really not be great right now; or ever really. But if they had to exist, if they could wait until she’d finished with Leviathan that would be great.

“Who do you work for?” She spoke harshly, but Peggy’s American accent was a little off, and if Angie had been calmer, she would have noticed that the voice sounded familiar. But she was a little busy trying not to panic. This was not how she had imagined this going. She wriggled, but to no avail. Leviathan really hadn’t prepared her for something like this, so she stayed quiet and tried to remember her tactics from when she used to roughhouse as a kid with her brother and cousins.

“I said-” But Peggy never got the chance to repeat herself.

Angie head-butted the person holding her down and it was just enough to disorientate them so she could push them off. She scrambled to her feet and stumbled through the darkness, almost crashing into the doorframe on her way as she started running back down the stairs like her life depended on it, which it very well might have for all she knew.

Peggy was disorientated for a moment too long, and by the time she was able to scramble after the quickly retreating figure, they had disappeared over the fence outside the building and off into the night beyond the halo of low lights created by the couple of working street lamps dotted around. She cursed.

Returning back upstairs to the room, Peggy flicked on her torch again and noticed a bag on the floor which hadn’t been there before the intruder arrived. She picked it up and went to look inside, but the first thing that hit her when she held it was the smell of perfume. She would know that perfume anywhere, but what her brain was concluding didn’t make any sense. No, it couldn’t be. Besides, it was doubtful that Angie was the only person in the world who wore that specific perfume and lots of people had ocean blue eyes… Her train of thought stopped abruptly when the only thing she found in the bag looked like a packed lunch, including a slice of panettone.

“Oh Angie, what are you doing?”

She winced a little at the fact that she’d tried to hit her with a stapler, and was suddenly very glad she’d missed. In her defence, Peggy had thought the intruder was a Leviathan agent.

She didn’t know how right she was.

It didn’t occur to her for more than half a second before Peggy dismissed the idea than Angie was working for Leviathan. Angie was fiercely loyal, Peggy had experienced that much first hand. She knew Angie, truly knew her. And she knew, if nothing else, that scrappy Angie Martinelli from Brooklyn, would never ever join the enemy. She would just have to find out what exactly was going on for Angie to be skulking about a closed club in questionable gear. She wondered for a moment if Angie was in some kind of trouble; the thought creased her brow. Then she realised she should also probably talk to her about eating a few hours before a mission, rather than bringing along a meal and snacks. The thought made her smile. For someone as tough and smart and savvy as she was in everyday life, Angie could have such an innocence about her in Peggy’s world. 

~~~~

Across the street from the club, on top of a building and looking through the scope of a sniper rifle, Dottie watched Peggy break into the building, followed by Angie a few minutes later, who then ran from the building again a few minutes after that, pelting over the fence at top speed as Peggy followed a little further behind. Dottie sighed. She had hoped they would injure each other more. This was very disappointing.

~~~

The next morning, Peggy turned up at Angie’s door bright and early. Too early, judging from the groggy look Angie gave her when she opened the door.

“Peggy?”

For a second, Peggy was transported back to the last time she’d seen that look, after they’d spent the night together at the home they shared. Angie always did like her beauty sleep. Not that she needed it, which Peggy didn’t fail to remind her.

“Good morning, Angie. May I come in?”

There was no way Leviathan wasn’t watching her house, Peggy needed to leave, _now_. How Peggy had found out where she lived wasn’t as pressing a concern.

“I don’t think-“

“I’ve come to return your bag.”

Angie’s eyes widened at the sight of the bag she’d lost last night, being held out to her in Peggy’s hand. Looking around outside quickly, Angie pulled Peggy inside and locked the door behind her.

“It was you? You attacked me at that club last night?”

Peggy looked a little abashed at this, “yes. Although I didn’t know it was you at the time.” Angie seemed to believe her, so Peggy asked the questions she’d been wanting to since she’d realised it was Angie. “What were you doing there? And wearing a balaclava?” She was incredulous.

It was at that exact moment, Angie realised that they had been set up. She looked at Peggy, mouth open in shock, not saying a word.

Peggy realised Angie wasn’t having an easy time of it and put a hand on her back, leading her gently into the living room and in front of the sofa. She went to make them both a strong cup of coffee as though she was right at home here, and sat next to Angie when she returned, placing the mug on the low table in front of them.

“Angie, in the nicest way possible, what the hell is going on?”

Angie took a sip of coffee and it seemed to restart her ability to talk; caffeine could do that first thing in the morning. She started at the beginning, and told Peggy everything since the moment she had vanished on that fateful day.

When she was done, it was Peggy’s turn to be dumbfounded. Her mind was whirring a hundred miles a minute, but the only thing she said was, “she knew. Dottie knew exactly what would happen.”

Peggy was on her feet in an instant, she suddenly had a horrible sinking feeling in her chest, and the only way to find out if it was justified was to go home and check on the time travel device she had hidden in her dresser.

“Oh no you don’t, English. I’m coming with you. I understand you want to protect your family,” she rose to her feet and looked ready to follow Peggy even in her nightgown, “but I want answers too, ya know.”

“What?” Peggy turned back to her with an endearingly confused look on her face. Apparently Angie hadn’t told her _absolutely_ everything.

“C’mon Peggy, of course I’m coming. And yeah, I know about your husband and kids. I’m not an idiot.”

Peggy looked at her totally blankly. “Well, then you know more about them than I do?”

For the first time since she’d spotted Peggy with Daniel playing happy families, Angie truly questioned what she had seen through the telescope when she had first recruited Dottie to help her find Peggy. “…you’re not married to some guy with two children?”

“What in heaven’s name gave you that idea?” _I’ve been in love with you since 1945!_ She stayed her tongue on the second part of that thought.

Angie narrowed her eyes and grit her teeth. “I’m going to kill Iowa.”

Peggy looked at Angie for a moment. “That’s why you moved out, why you left me?” Her voice was soft, distracted from figuring out exactly what was going on now, by realisations about the past. “I thought-” She cut herself off.

Angie wanted so badly to take Peggy in her arms just then, but she wasn’t sure where they stood right now anymore. “I’m so sorry, English. I should’ve just… God, if I had just talked to you about it.”

Peggy took Angie’s hands in her own, gently. Her mind focusing on figuring out what it meant if Dottie had done what Peggy suspected she had.

“Angie, I really want to have this conversation, but we need to know what we’re up against first, okay? This is strategic. I need to check something, and then we can figure out what to do next. I’ll be in touch.”

And with that, Peggy let go of her hands and swept out, already power-walking home and keeping a neutral expression on her face which hid the complete emotional turmoil this was creating in her chest. Right now, Peggy needed to fix this. And she was already working on how she was going to achieve that, she just needed to know one thing first. 

As soon as she got home, Peggy rushed to her dresser and opened the secret compartment. Her suspicions were confirmed when she was greeted with an almost empty cubby; Dottie had stolen Howard’s time travel device from her own house. She wasn’t sure which part of that she was more upset by, but she would definitely be upgrading security. 

~~~~

Sitting downstairs on the sofa, Peggy took a swig of schnapps.

This had all started with Howard’s infernal time travel device. So she had to go back and find a way to make sure he never invented it…which also meant she would be stuck in the past, again. And that she would have to restart everything from scratch, again. And there were a million other things she would have to do all over _again_.

She took another, longer swig. This time she didn’t notice the burn on the back of her throat, she was quickly becoming accustomed to it.

Whenever she thought she this whole time travel thing was settled, the light at the end of the tunnel just seemed to get further away. She thought of Angie, being recruited by Leviathan, and Dottie… Suddenly, Peggy had an idea. For the first time in a long, long time, she called Howard about something other than Shield.

~~~~

Beyond being glad to apparently have his friend back again, Howard was intrigued enough to stay quiet and to listen to Peggy’s entire plan before sitting back with a nod. “I can do that.”

Peggy subtly breathed a sigh of relief. 

The first part involved Howard creating another time travel device, and then inventing a modified version of it, but one with limited charges.

Once he had done so, Peggy labelled the original model very carefully, and used it to go back in time and replace the one in her own house moments after she had first put it there, which she guessed Dottie was planning to steal sometime in the next couple of days. As she opened the return rift, Peggy tried to recall a time when travelling through temporal streams had seemed novel to her; now it felt about as exciting as catching the bus. Albeit a bus which had once taken her on a very long, impromptu diversion, the thought of which sometimes made her mind wander to unpleasant places in her sleep. She shivered involuntarily.

As she got safely back, it meant that the first part of her plan had gone off without a hitch. Now, Leviathan had only ever had a semi-functional time travel device to begin with – enough to keep the current timeline intact, but not enough for them to change time any more.

The next step required a little bit more luck, and Peggy having faster reflexes than Dottie. Which she was almost positive she had. Almost.

Peggy knew Dottie liked playing games and always kept her cards close to her chest, cards such as Angie being a source of information she had brought into Leviathan. After all, what was the point of holding an ace if everyone knew you had it? There was a good chance Dottie had kept as much information as she could about Angie secret, to keep herself a key part of achieving Leviathan’s ends through Angie, or whatever it was Dottie seemed to want. Peggy not having been able to suss that out already was another indicator that Dottie was secretive by design, and it was something Peggy was counting on if this was going to work; just like she was counting on Howard to have successfully updated the memory eraser device.

“You’re sure this doesn’t have the same memory restoration potential or whatever it is you called it?”

“Positive. It’ll work, Peg.”

Peggy took a breath, picked up the device and went to meet Dottie as they had arranged – which had been a to-do all on its own. But it was set up now, and Peggy steeled her nerves. Hopefully, they would only have to do this once.

~~~~

As soon as Peggy opened the warehouse door, she saw Dottie waiting for her.

“It’s nice to see you, Peggy-” she spoke in a sing-song voice, but before she could finish the statement, Peggy had activated the memory changer and wiped Dottie’s memories completely, for her entire life. Dottie initially tried to fight the sleep-inducing side effect, but then she couldn’t remember why she was trying to. Peggy caught her before she hit the floor, and laid her down more gently. She radioed Jarvis, who was parked 12 blocks away for safety, and he came to pick up Dottie and drop her off at a hospital in another state. Leviathan would still find her, most likely within a week or two, but she wouldn’t be able to tell them anything, even if she wanted to.

But Dottie had to have been speaking to at least one person in a position of relative influence in order for them to be pulling strings to get Angie where Leviathan wanted her to be. That meant there was a trail of breadcrumbs which someone could follow straight to Angie. Peggy took a moment and allowed herself to compartmentalise, she could worry about it tomorrow; she had bought them some time.

She took a breath and felt a swell of emotion in her chest as Jarvis drove Dottie away; Angie was a little bit safer.

Now she just had to take down the rest of Leviathan. With all the free time she didn’t have, now that she was Director of Shield and already overseeing hundreds of international missions.

A thought occurred to her and although it almost felt like a foreign concept after her time and treatment at the SSR, but being the Director of Shield meant that she didn’t necessarily have to take Leviathan down alone. 


	10. Chapter 10

Peggy knocked on Daniel’s office door at the CIA; it was just a little fancier than the SSR bullpen. At least here the agents all seemed to get their own office.

“Come in,” he looked up from running a highlighter over part of a report and was completely stunned to see Peggy standing there.

They exchanged stilted pleasantries briefly; it had been a long time since they had last spoken after all. But soon enough it was time to cut to the chase.

“Do you remember that contact of yours from years ago, the one who warned us about the inspector?”

Daniel leaned back in his chair, “yeah, the guy who never actually showed.”

“He works for Leviathan.”

Daniel seemed to take a minute to process this, and was about to deny it could be true, when he seemed to realise that Peggy wouldn’t have reached that conclusion without evidence.

But as soon as he realised that, Daniel’s mind became clouded.

“Did you just drop by to warn me or?” He gave her a crooked smile as he rose from his chair and walked around Peggy to the door.

“Unfortunately not, I need you to contact him and set up a trap….” Peggy trailed off as Daniel locked the door. “Daniel,” she tried to meet his gaze, “what are you doing?” Her tone was calm and cool, and very deceptive with regard to hiding her slightly alarmed confusion. 

“He knew you would figure it out.” He muttered, as though talking to himself. “But what now, why can’t I remember what I’m supposed to do now...”

“Daniel?” But it was as though he couldn’t hear her. She snapped her fingers in front of him and suddenly he seemed to notice she was still there. His gaze was empty.

“I need to focus.”

Peggy blanched and took a few precious seconds to fully realise that it sounded rather like Daniel was somehow under Fennhoff’s control, and to process the massive national security threat that posed. But in the same instance, as if it were a reflex and without a second thought, Peggy subtly reached for the tranquiliser gun in her coat’s inside pocket, and quickly shot Daniel twice in the chest before he even knew what was happening. She would have to thank Angie for insisting she brought tranqs to work with her as well as her Walther; this would not have gone as smoothly otherwise. She checked he was out by prodding him repeatedly with the tip of her shoe, then picked up the phone on Daniel’s desk and prised the casing off the receiver. Sure enough, there was a small bug attached to the wiring.

Without wasting time doing a full sweep of his office for more listening devices, she propped him up, put his coat and hat on him, tilted to hide as much of his face as possible without attracting unnecessary attention, and half carried him out of the building and into a nearby alleyway. She left him there, still unconscious, for long enough to make sure they weren’t being followed, and use the payphone around the corner to make a covertly coded call for a Shield transport vehicle to pick them up and relay a message to Howard that the CIA had been compromised.

This was not anything close to how she had thought today was going to go.

~~~~

Although neither of them had actually spoken about it, Angie had sort of unofficially moved back in with Peggy as soon as Dottie was out of the picture. It had started the day Dottie’s memories were erased and Angie had gone to Peggy’s to check in; except she’d ended up staying the night, and for the next couple of days, and now she was there more often than she was at her own place. As much as she had refused to make it official, what with Leviathan still technically leveraging her families’ lives over her head to ensure her compliance, she also knew that there was nowhere safer she could be than by Peggy’s side. At best, it was for her protection, at worst, she was bait to bring them out and have Peggy take them down like the one woman army she was; either way, these days she slept more peacefully than she had in years, lying by Peggy’s side at the end of every day.

At least, she usually did.

At this precise moment, Angie hadn’t see Peggy for days. It wasn’t unusual for her to disappear for un-predetermined periods of time and be unreachable, but it was the longest they hadn’t seen each other since that fateful day Peggy had been waiting for her in her dressing room. Angie realised then just how quickly and easily they had fit right back into each other’s lives, as though those four years apart had been some kind of dream. But now it was just as stressful as it had been back then, before Angie had been given a more detailed education as to the ins and outs of Peggy’s world, though the precise details were still just as much of a secret.

On top of that, since the night Peggy had gone to erase Dottie’s memories, Leviathan had been radio silent. She wasn’t sure whether to be worried or relieved. But Dottie wasn’t the only person who had contacted her from Leviathan, so Angie figured it was only a matter of time. Besides, it was about time for her to be hearing from the Hollywood people Leviathan had told her she had to go and work with next. It had been a stressful few days for sure.

Angie had just decided to run herself a bubble bath when a key turned in the front door lock and Peggy appeared, looking a little worse for wear, as she usually did when fresh from a mission, but it was still her Peggy, home in one piece. She sent a quick ‘thank you’ heavenward.

Angie rushed to her and almost wrapped her up in a hug, before remembering from experience that although Peggy appreciated the gesture, she was also probably pretty bruised and should not be put into a vice-like Martinelli hug for fear of making her injuries worse.

Angie settled for kissing her on the cheek, but before she could withdraw, Peggy caught her chin with a finger and pulled her back in for a long kiss.

When they finally broke apart, Peggy rested her forehead against Angie’s softly. “God, I missed you.”

Angie couldn’t have helped the smile that tugged at her lips if she’d wanted to, “I missed you too, English.”

~~~~

Four days after Peggy had first brought him back, the interrogation still hadn’t gotten much out of Daniel; he didn’t seem to know anything about being hypnotised, despite wanting to help. The most they had discovered so far, was that there appeared to be certain triggers set up in his mind, which when stumbled upon, caused Daniel to perform a sequence of behaviours, which he later had very little recollection of, as though it was something he had simply dreamed.

Although some of the trigger sequences appeared to have faded with time, indicating that it had been a while ago when Fennhoff had created them, that didn’t do much to give Peggy hope. There was no way Fennhoff would have been able to hypnotise Daniel before he was incarcerated without someone noticing, which left only two possible options.

For a moment Peggy wasn’t sure which would be a better outcome, Fennhoff having escaped and caused unknown damage for goodness knew how long, or Fennhoff still being imprisoned and Leviathan having another recruit who could hypnotise people.

~~~~

_1947_

It was Charlie’s first day working at the prison. He didn’t know much about it, beyond that it was a top secret facility and not to ask too many questions, but that was mostly common sense. There hadn’t been much training, but the other guys in the locker room seemed friendly enough and he was just happy to have a job that didn’t involve welding metal rivets for 12 hours a day in all conditions, anything had to be better than that; he couldn’t afford to lose any more toes. This prison guard job was practically cushy by comparison, decent pay and dental; and if he was lucky and picked up a couple extra shifts, he’d be able to save up enough to propose to his sweetheart. They hadn’t really talked about kids yet, but they had been going steady for a little while and the comforting idea of having her and a nice warm house of their own to come home to at the end of the day motivated him to get out of bed in the morning.

He was lost in these and other happy thoughts when he slipped on a piece of paper outside one of the cells. He fell with a thud, and sat up, only to hear the jingling of his keys being taken from his belt.

“Hey!”

But the short prisoner was already unlocking the muzzle affixed to his cellmate’s face.

He panicked, he would most definitely get fired for this if it was found out that he’d made a blunder this big on his first day, and he couldn’t afford that.

He hesitated for a moment too long before trying to call for help. The muzzle clanged as it hit the floor.

“I need you to focus.”

As the man kept speaking in an even tone, all of a sudden Charlie didn’t want to call for help anymore.

~~~~

_1952_

Peggy knew Fennhoff had been restrained from speaking during his incarceration, because she herself had overseen it. Just as she had overseen the only key for that muzzle be safely stored in the Warden’s office and the procedures in place for when it needed to be taken out of the office and used, including the provision of sound-mufflers for the guard doing the temporary unlocking. She did not know that in 1947 the Warden had unofficially permitted that key to be replicated and issued to every guard, so that he wouldn’t have to be disturbed every time a guard needed to unlock Fennhoff’s mouthpiece in order for him to eat and drink. At some point, security had taken a backseat to the Warden’s comfort and desire for peace, a choice which he eventually paid for with his life when Fennhoff came into his office, completely unrestrained, and told him to focus on jumping in front of a train at the nearest station.

_1947_

Standing in the newly empty office, for a moment Fennhoff was tempted to put on the blazer hanging on the Warden’s chair, which was the most recognisable part of the uniform, there was a lot he could accomplish as the head of top secret prison. But after thinking better of it, he decided not to. As planned, Zola was staying here to keep up appearances should anyone who had not been hypnotised come looking for either of them, and to recruit new prisoners to Hydra. With his newfound and completely undetected freedom, Fennhoff now had much bigger fish to fry, like the newly formed CIA, Shield, and Howard Stark.

_1952_

Peggy came to a sharp stop in front of Fennhoff and Zola’s cell, half hoping they would both still be there. Sure enough, Zola was there, intently drawing something on a piece of paper and unaware of Peggy’s presence. But the man lying on Fenhoff’s bunk, wearing his muzzle, was most definitely not Fennhoff.

It was a small relief that this meant it was probably still just Fennhoff who could manipulate people’s minds by talking to them and spinning that ring, he hadn’t somehow passed on that particular talent to any protégés. But that feeling of relief was quickly overshadowed by a much larger feeling which came over her, as she felt herself effortlessly slipping into battle mode.

She needed to think tactically and figure out how to win on this newly discovered front of the war.

~~~~

Angie watched Peggy from the doorway with a slight smile playing on her lips, watching Peggy work through big projects like this was something she was sure she’d never get tired of. Peggy was sat on the floor, surrounded by piles of papers strewn across the living room, forming a carpet which stretched from wall to wall. She tiptoed between small gaps where she could, careful not to misplace anything as she practically danced over to Peggy in the middle of the room and the tallest piles of papers. When she reached her, she knelt down and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Peggy looked at her distractedly for a moment, clearly still in the zone of whatever she was working on, but paying enough attention to Angie to stop and smile at her.

“I didn’t hear you come in.” She kissed her briefly, but tenderly.

Angie shrugged with a grin, “you looked a little busy, I didn’t want to disturb.” She gestured at the small forest of papers.

Peggy winced, “sorry about the mess darling, I ran out of space in the study.”

“Don’t worry about it. I know I’m just as bad when I’m rehearsing.”

Peggy gave her a distracted smile, as a thought seemed to occur to her and she started rifling through a nearby pile.

“Can I help?”

“No, thank you Angie. I’ve just got to figure some things out.” Her brow was creased with the little crinkle she got whenever she got lost in her thoughts a million miles away.

Angie tilted her head and watched her as a thought occurred to her, “have you eaten today?”

Peggy paused in pulling one specific document from the pile she was holding.

“At some point, I think I must have.”

Angie looked at the long since emptied coffee mug on top on the papers scattered over the table.

“I’m going to make you some food, anything you fancy?”

“Anything you’re making sounds wonderful to me.” Peggy caught Angie’s hand as she rose to head to the kitchen, and kissed her palm. “You really are the best, do you know that?”

Angie winked, “I don’t mind being reminded.” 


	11. Chapter 11

Peggy held up a file triumphantly, “we’ve got him.” Although she wouldn’t allow herself to fully celebrate until he was behind bars again, and in a much more secure facility, Peggy did allow herself a moment to lie back on the mess of papers strewn behind her and rest, with her eyes closed and a smile on her face. This was a solid step towards victory.

When she opened her eyes again, she found Angie hovering over her, three inches away, pulling a funny face. Peggy burst out laughing and soon enough Angie was grinning too.

“You,” she sat up and kissed Angie, “are such a dork.”

Angie smiled again, “only for you.”

Peggy traced a finger down her cheek for a moment. “I love you, more than I can properly express.”

Angie caught her hand against her cheek and returned her gaze. “I love you too. And I think you do just fine expressing yourself,” Angie considered for a moment, “when you want to.” She grinned as Peggy pretended to pout, which lasted all of three seconds before Angie was kissing her and all thoughts of pouting were forgotten as Peggy kissed her back, running her fingers through Angie’s hair. When they broke for air, Angie ran her hands down Peggy’s sides as she trailed open mouthed kisses down her neck, eliciting sounds from Peggy that went straight to her core. After taking a breath, Angie looked at Peggy with dark eyes, “you can take a night off, right?”

Peggy gave her a wicked grin, “I can a lot more off than that, darling.” Angie was about to make a comment about Peggy actually being the dork, when Peggy captured Angie’s lips again, before picking her up as she rose, and carrying her upstairs to their bedroom.

For the first night in weeks, Peggy didn’t think of the papers scattered around downstairs for even a moment.

~~~~

There were two potential strikes Fennhoff could be organising or be at, one she had found, the other one of the few Shield analysts she had some faith in, had found. Peggy was fairly certain the one the analyst had spotted was a decoy, a suspicion which was reinforced when both strikes appeared to be happening on the same night. But still, Peggy had sent a decent, well-equipped team to intercept the potential decoy, as she herself took a hand-picked team to the other target.

It was only once she arrived and the team was set up surrounding the site, that Peggy got a nagging feeling in her gut that something was seriously wrong.

Finding the intel had been a challenge, but this set up, it seemed way too easy. Part of her entertained the idea that the information was so difficult to find on purpose to deflect suspicion, but Fennhoff had no reason to believe she knew about his escape, so why would the meet up be heavily guarded? A more experienced part of her wanted to go over the data again, to re-examine every little thing which had lead them here. But they didn’t have time for that right now.

~~~~

Back at the house which Angie now thought of as hers and Peggy’s, Angie was pulling a batch of cookies from the oven when the doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock, it read just gone 8pm. Who on earth would be calling on them at this hour?

She supposed it was probably Howard, or some ill-informed agent looking for Peggy.

She was about to unlock the door, when she thought better of it, and pushed aside the curtain on the small window by the door, just enough to see who it was. For a second, she almost wished she’d brought Peggy’s spare gun which lived taped under the hall table with her. But when she looked through the window, all she saw was an older looking man, spinning a ring around his finger. He caught her eye and smiled at her, as she discreetly looked through the window, completely silently.

“Hello, I am a friend of Peggy. She told me to meet her here.”

Angie’s instincts told her not to open the door, so she ignored her mama’s voice in her head telling her she was being rude, and spoke loudly through the door instead, “Peggy didn’t tell me she was expecting anyone.”

“Ah, she is so very forgetful sometimes I think.” He smiled at her, “but if you could just focus, I think you would see that you need to let me in.”

~~~~

It had been silent since they had finished setting up, a good half hour before the meet up was supposed to go down. Except now it twenty minutes after the meeting time and there had been no movement. They couldn’t have missed it, they had the perimeter surrounded.

Peggy examined the site from the roof where she was positioned through the scope of her rifle, looking for anything amiss. But there was nothing amiss, in fact there was nothing at all. The site was empty, the meeting was a bust, and they had nothing to show for the hundreds of hours which had led to this moment. There was a good chance this was just some kind of game orchestrated by Fennhoff to waste their time and distract their attention.

The gnawing feeling in Peggy’s gut grew more intense by the second and she could not stand it anymore. She put her deputy in charge in her stead, told them to wait for another hour and started to head back to HQ on one of the new Shield motorcycles that Howard had had a lot of fun decking out with gadgets. Except when she got to the intersection between heading to the office and heading home, something told her she needed to go home. The traffic light turned green, she made a split second decision, indicated, and started heading home instead.

Two blocks away, in the direction of Shield HQ, a car built to resemble a small tank in weight and power was waiting for Peggy’s motorcycle to pass in front of it.

But Fennhoff was nothing if not prepared.

Four blocks away from reaching home, Peggy was still trying to figure out the cause of this feeling. But that didn’t distract her enough to stop her from noticing the car which had started following her two blocks back.

If they had found her on this route, they probably knew where she lived. But that didn’t mean she had to make it easy for them. Peggy turned a corner and started heading down a street away from her home, speeding up as fast as the motorbike would go as soon as she cleared the corner. She reached the next intersection and swerved widely around the bend, running a red light and thankful for the lower levels of traffic at this time of night which were relatively easy to weave around on a motorcycle. Peggy swerved around a few more corners, leading the car following her on a merry goose chase until she was almost positive she had outmanoeuvred them.

She slowed right down and parked between two cars on the side of the road, then turned off the engine and pressed one of the ridiculous array of buttons on the second, hidden dashboard. As she had hoped, it was the button which changed the appearance of the bike. Then she ran to the nearest fire escape and started climbing up, better to be safe than sorry. But the rungs were slippery and her boots were not designed to grip slippery metal surfaces, a flaw she would have to discuss with the R&D team when she got back. For now, she simply hoisted herself up using her arms, though her muscles protested the movement after a while, she didn’t falter. It only reminded her to start training harder, whether she was supposed to be in the field or not. The fact that she could still take anyone in Shield on hand-to-hand and win easily enough was nice, but being able to escape lethal situations was better and she would not allow herself to get complacent.

She realised later it was probably the lack of food rather than actual muscle weakness which had her energy levels dropping. As Angie consistently reminded her with a teasing tone, a car could only get so far running on fumes.

Once she was halfway up the building, she sat on one of the little landings between the ladders and watched the darkness below, though oddly it didn’t seem all that dark to her. She was able to make out the cars passing down below, including one which paused for a moment at her bike, then continued on it’s way, heading slowly down the street.

She examined the car closely, but there was no real need to. She could tell at first glance it wasn’t the car that had been following her. Just how many people did Fennhoff have out looking for her?

~~~~

After a steady stream of suspicious looking cars, Peggy eventually decided to climb back down, hotwire a car, and drive a few blocks closer to home. She would get someone to replace the car in it’s original sport as soon as she could, and pick up the bike while they were there.

Once she was still a few blocks away, she left the car and ran home, dodging through shadows. As much as she knew she could take on any henchmen, she didn’t particularly fancy being cornered by Fennhoff and being hypnotised. Though if they knew where she lived, and Fennhoff clearly had some kind of vendetta this evening, even going home was a risk. But she would not leave Angie undefended.

Rather than use the front door, Peggy climbed up the side of the house and slide her pocket knife under the loose roof tile where she kept a key to the attic window. She’d known it was going to come in handy sometime.

Peggy crept into each room, checking nothing was amiss, then crept downstairs making sure they were secure at every possible point along the way. To not startle Angie, Peggy stopped by the front door, as though she had just got in the normal way, and not snuck into her own house like the overly-cautious spy she currently was.

“Angie, I’m home.”

“Hey Pegs,” Angie poked her head out from the living room. “Did you ask anyone to meet you here tonight?”

Peggy’s blood ran cold. “No, why do you ask?”

“I knew it! You’re never gonna believe what happened.” Angie fully appeared around the corner, but the look on Peggy’s face made her pause. “Are you okay? You look like your dog just died.”

“I need,” for some reason her voice came out rather strangled, “for you to tell me exactly what happened.”

Angie nodded and took her hand, leading her to the sofa in the living room and sitting her down before going to pour them both a drink – well, hers was a refill, but it had been an unsettling evening after all and more than worthy of opening a new bottle of peach schnapps.

“So this guy comes to the front door, right.” Angie can tell Peggy is already bursting to interrupt her and start asking questions, but she carries on regardless.

Peggy suddenly has to stop herself from rising and searching the rest of the house and the upstairs again. Somehow she is certain Fennhoff is waiting around some corner to ambush her in her own home. “And he’s a-knocking on the door at like 8 o’clock, 8pm! Can you believe it, the nerve of some people.” Angie picks up the two glasses and takes them over to the sofa to settle next to Peggy.

“Anyway, so I go to the door, ‘cause I figure maybe it’s Howard or someone, you know? I feel like he has no sense of time or propriety...” Angie stops herself from going off on a tangent at the sight of Peggy’s white knuckles, clasped in her lap, one hand resting on a gun which wasn’t there before. If it unsettles Angie, she doesn’t comment on it. “So I’m at the door, and it’s this guy who says he knows you, and that you asked to meet him here.” Peggy does not remember ever having been this on edge in her entire life.

But Angie remembered this happening, that had to be a good sign, right? She thought of Daniel’s lack of recall for a moment.

“But I’m thinking, that can’t be right. Like, even if it wasn’t an unacceptable hour to call at someone’s house, something just seems off about this guy, you know? And you’re always reminding me to trust my instincts.” If Peggy hadn’t been on the verge of having heart palpitations, she would have smiled. “So I do, and I don’t open the door.” Angie takes a sip of her drink and watches Peggy knock hers back in one.

Alcohol was probably not a good idea for her reflexes and other fighting-related things, but right now it’s the only thing she can do to calm her nerves. A thought crosses Peggy’s mind as she sets the empty glass back on the table, what if Fennhoff had hypnotised Angie into spiking her drink? She supposes it’s too late to do anything about that now, but after focusing on any potentially odd feelings, she concludes that she seems to feel okay. Another thought crosses her mind almost straight after, and she studies Angie’s lips for a moment, and almost sighs in relief; she’s not wearing her brand.

“But this guy’s like really insisting that he had to come in, right. And I’m thinking, what a creep? You can’t just show up at someone’s house and demand to be invited in of an evening. Like, who does that? The nerve of some people. And the chutzpah. And just the _nerve_.” Angie takes another sip of her drink and appears to be done recounting her night; she turns to Peggy. “So how was your evening?”

Peggy tries to speak normally, “so you didn’t let him in?”

“Nah, was I supposed to?” She turns around at this, with a raised eyebrow and a cheeky smile tugging at her lips.

Peggy almost collapses in relief. She wants to. But it seems exceedingly peculiar that Fennhoff hadn’t managed to hypnotise Angie.

“No. Never, do not ever let that man anywhere near you. He comes from one direction? You head in the other and don’t be afraid to run.” She paused, “did he have a ring?”

“Yeah, real shiny gold thing he kept fiddling with. Reminded me of a ring my Poppi used to wear.” Angie shrugged, “what is he some like black market ring dealer or something?”

Peggy really, really, really wanted to believe that Angie was okay and un-hypnotised. But she was far too cautious for an un-evidenced daydream like that.

“No, nothing like that.” She plastered on a smile and stared into Angie’s eyes, studying them carefully, as though if she looked really closely she would see some kind of indicator of what exactly Fennhoff had gone to all the trouble of leading Shield on at least one wild goose chase to do.

But Angie simply smiled at her, the same way she did every day and nudged Peggy’s shoulder. “You worry too much, English.”

Peggy gave her a real smile for a moment, then excused herself and crept silently from room to room through the rest of the house, before going upstairs again, clearing it as though it was enemy territory, with her gun held steady in her hands.

The rest of the house was empty, and everything still seemed to be exactly as she had left it.

But Daniel had seemed to be fine for at least four years, probably longer. And even then, he had only been caught through a series of coincidences.

Peggy leaned against a wall in their bedroom and allowed herself to slide down it until she was sitting on the floor.

If nothing else, she had to move house again. Maybe she should just move into her office; that would be a quick commute at least.

For a brief moment, she wondered if Angie really had been able to resist hypnosis; hope tugged at her thoughts but logic overruled it in the end.

Fennhoff was strong enough to manipulate Chief Dooley and goodness knew how many other people into doing exactly as he pleased. And there was no doubt in her mind that however Fennhoff had manipulated Angie, it would be something to do with Peggy. So the safest option was to keep them apart; ideally, as far apart as possible. Logically, she knew it was the right thing to do and it was what she was going to do. But no small part of her protested the thought of pushing Angie away further than reaching distance. And those feelings, which she knew Fennhoff perceived as weakness, were exactly why her mind was already made up to leave.

Now she just had one more reason on a very long list of reasons which kept her motivated to take down Leviathan. Peggy didn’t know Fennhoff was working for Hydra now, just like she didn’t know where to start or what information she could trust anymore. She crossed her arms over her knees and rested her head against the wall; one day, she was bound to catch a break.

~~~~

The call for Angie to move to Hollywood didn’t ever come from Leviathan in the end. It came from an actual casting director offering her a starring role in some big new production. Of course, the shoot would last a few months, and would she be okay to move? They would give her the biggest trailer, naturally…

The first thing she wanted to do after nonchalantly asking the director to send the contract over to her lawyer and saying she was intrigued and would think about it, was to run around and squeal and tell Peggy the amazing news; except she couldn’t, because she didn’t know where Peggy was. To her credit, Peggy had told her she was going to disappear, Angie just hadn’t taken her seriously at the time.

One visit from some random guy and Peggy was heading for the hills? It just didn’t make a lot of sense.

But then a lot of things about Peggy’s world hadn’t made a lot of sense to her. She supposed she wouldn’t ever get the chance to understand them now. But it almost didn’t matter anymore. It had been a month and Angie’s Broadway run was finishing soon and now she had an exciting new movie offer. She decided to call some of her old neighbours from the Griffith that she’d kept in touch with, she needed to see friendly faces and something to distract her from all the free time she had on her hands that she didn’t know what to do with now. She’d ended up taking up a serious of random hobbies, none of which had quite stuck more than a week or so before she itched to move on to something else. This new project couldn’t have come at a better time.

She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to accept acting jobs Leviathan didn’t specifically orchestrate, but until she heard otherwise from them, she was going to assume it was fine. After all, they’d wanted her in Hollywood anyway, right?

~~~~

Peggy took off her tactical gloves and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. She stepped over the bodies on the floor, one or two still frothing at the mouth from crunching cyanide pills, and started tapping away on the ship’s control room keyboard.

Every single Leviathan-now-Hydra agent who had even so much as heard Angie’s name in passing, was now dead or captured, except Fennhoff. And Dottie, but she’d had her memory erased so Peggy wasn’t going after her anymore.

And there was no trace of the hypnotist here, just as there had been no trace of him at the other eight locations she had personally tracked him to and invaded mercilessly.

But she left her ear defenders on anyway, just in case.

On the plus side, Leviathan had effectively been dismantled and they were making a considerable dent in Hydra’s forces; though as if they were somehow remaining true to their name, for every base Shield knocked down, they seemed to find out about another couple. Still their progress was not as much comfort to Peggy as it could have been, though the World Security Council were mostly delighted at having so much visible progress at their feet.

~~~~

_1960_

Finally, _finally_ , Fennhoff was in her sights, and they had the upper hand. He had to be the last head of Hydra, as by now she was fairly sure the others had been well and truly hunted to the brink of extinction, outside of prison at least.

Peggy stepped closer to him, until the cool metal of the barrel of her gun was pressed firmly to the side of his head.

“I’m only going to ask you this once.” She smiled, “and don’t bother with the tricks.” She silently thanked Howard for developing special Shield ear defenders, and sent a prayer to anyone who was listening, that they really were hypnosis-proof. 

“Tell me, what you did to Angela Martinelli.”

His hands stayed up, but he smiled a little, “ah, Angela. it was a little while ago now, but I remember her. She was a lovely lady. A little defensive, but,” he shrugged.

She applied a little pressure to the gun, forcing his head sideways. He seemed to get the message.

“I didn’t do anything to her,” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “I tried, it was really, most peculiar. In another life, maybe I would have got the chance to see how she resisted.” He sounded like a vaguely curious scientist developing the hypothesis for a new project.

“She resisted you, and you don’t know how?” Peggy found that hard to believe, and he had plenty of reasons to lie.

She had been duped one time too many to give him so much as an inch.

“Tell me, Agent Carter-”

“Director Carter.”

“My apologies, tell me, Director Carter, why do you ask questions, when you do not trust the answers?”

Peggy almost smiled, but it came out as more of a grimace as he waited for a reply he wasn’t going to get; _because I don’t have to trust them._ She had cautiously high hopes for Howard’s latest attempt at a lie detector.

With a new muzzle fitted to him, to which only Peggy had the key, they blindfolded Fennhoff and bundled him off to an interrogation room at a secret Shield location.

~~~~

Peggy looked at Howard, then back to the device he had placed on the table.

“In the nicest way possible, it doesn’t look like much.” She knew he had worked hard on it, but a series of wires which attached a box to metal strips, was not all that to look at.

Howard bristled, “it doesn’t need to look impressive, to function impressively.” He spoke haughtily. “Here.” He tried to attach one of the clips to the pulse point at her wrist, but she withdrew her hand sharply.

“Why don’t we try it on you first, hm?”

Howard supposed he couldn’t begrudge her that. He attached one clip to his wrist with a thin piece of tape, then applied a small amount of gel to the others and placed them at seemingly set points around his forehead and on the top front of his head, securing them all with tape as well, then hooked the box up to a processor which took up half the room by itself.

As soon as it was attached, the processor started to spit out a long string of numbers.

“See that? That’s my heart rate and that’s my prefrontal activity.” He pointed alternately at the line of numbers and the squiggly line both being produced in a continuous stream.

Peggy looked at him.

“Thrilling.”

Howard glared, “just ask me as question you know the answer to.”

She sighed, “is your name, Howard Stark?”

The processor continued to produce very similar looking numbers and squiggles on the increasingly long piece of paper.

“It looks the same as before.”

“Right, now ask me a question and I’ll lie.”

“Did you eat the last piece of cake yesterday?”

Howard glowered at her, “no.”

She looked at the new lines on the sheet. They were noticeably different.

He carefully peeled off the electrical activity receptors.

“It’s not fool-proof, but shy of going to the future and bringing back something way more advanced, it’s the best we’ve got right now. It’ll work for this.”

Peggy considered the device for a moment. “You’re sure?”

He nodded.

Peggy opened the door and asked a nearby agent to bring Fennhoff here.

It was worth a shot.

~~~~

Angie was thinking about the day Peggy left. She thought about that day a lot. But today she was visiting her family, and with her baby nephew bouncing happily on her knee, she sat in the kitchen with her Ma and Nonna preparing the vegetables for dinner.

And from nowhere she was reminded of one of their last conversations, and she couldn’t stop picking apart their talk about the guy with the ring.

Although it seemed pointless, there was no harm in asking now; Angie made sure her Nonna wasn’t close to cutting her fingers instead of the carrots, before she spoke, “Nonna, do you remember the ring Poppi used to wear all the time?”

Nonna nodded, as a nostalgic smile came over her face. “Ah yes, his wedding ring was the only piece of jewellery he would ever wear you know. None of these gold chains like the others when they were younger, pretending to be something else,” she scoffed, “no, that was the only thing for your Poppi.”

Angie’s nephew wiggled on her lap, and she lifted him down gently, knowing he’d be back in about two minutes when he wanted to sit on his favourite zia’s lap again.

Nonna looked thoughtful for a moment, with a smile still on her face as she recalled her late husband, “you know, when I met him, he was a little bit into magic. He liked to do all kinds of tricks, pulling coins out from behind people’s ears.”

As her Nonna spoke, Angie had a vague recollection of her Poppi doing exactly that with her when she was very small. “And other little tricks. But the most impressive,” here she paused dramatically, “was getting all you kids to go to bed on time!” She laughed, “oh, you and your brother were such trouble when one of us tried to put you down,” she gestured between herself and Angie’s Ma, “but when he went to read you a story, in just minutes you were out like a light. That was his greatest magic trick.” Her Nonna had a twinkle in her eye that Angie didn’t notice, because she was just now remembering her Poppi telling her and her brother bedtime stories, while spinning his wedding ring on his finger, and both of them falling asleep almost instantly.

For years, they had always had to ask for the story again, because they feel asleep before the end. And then one day she had managed to stay awake for the whole story, and again the next night, and the next. Until eventually those stories didn’t make her feel tired at all. She had simply thought she had grown out of being lulled to sleep by stories, as much as she still loved them. Or perhaps that she had gotten more interested in how Poppi did different voices for all the characters and acted out the scenes, and she had started to love acting.

Sure enough, Angie’s nephew returned almost exactly two minutes later. But instead of putting him on her lap, she rose from her chair, picked him up and put him on her hip, then went to make a call.

~~~~

Peggy sat heavily in the closest chair. “You’re saying-” she cleared her throat, which was very dry all of a sudden. “You’re saying, that he’s telling the truth? That he never actually hypnotised Angie?” Howard nodded, but said nothing. “Beyond reasonable doubt?”

He nodded again. The device might not have been foolproof, but results that clear seemed fairly conclusive, especially considering the eight hour interrogation they had put him through. It had produced a _lot_ of data; he was pretty confident.

“After all this time… all this _time_ ,” Peggy didn’t appear to be talking to him anymore, but he stood there, for whatever comfort his presence could provide.

“Everything… it was for nothing.” Peggy could very easily have been talking about essentially taking down Leviathan and then Hydra, but Howard knew better; she was talking about everything she had done to keep herself away from Angie. He knew more than most how difficult it was, as well as she hid it, those moments where she allowed herself a moment to relax her defences, it was plain as day. She carried the hurt like it was a bag of bricks attached to her, useless and weighing her down when she was already treading water.

Peggy looked up at the ceiling and tried to process how much she had lost, for nothing.

For more than a moment, she was sorely tempted to find Howard’s old time travel device, go back and fix everything. Or at least give them some of that lost time back together. But that damn thing only ever seemed to cause more problems.

Peggy stood up and left the room, heading into her office to grab her coat and bag, before leaving the building altogether. She started heading to the studio she mostly kept so that she could work on the weekends without being interrupted by overeager new recruits pestering her every second, because they wanted her to notice that they were also there on the weekend. It was something she actively tried to discourage; they did not need to work every day of the week, it wasn’t healthy. She only worked that much because she felt like her real life was on pause until it was done, until Leviathan and now Hydra were gone and she could actually start to live again, with Angie in some ridiculously perfect house with a greenhouse and flowerbeds out back, and no more life threatening situations coming between them. At least not any that Peggy couldn’t handle, because that was really why they were apart, because she couldn’t handle Fennhoff and he had hypnotised Angie. Except apparently he hadn’t and she was just overcautious and overzealous to play the self-sacrificing hero because she didn’t know how else to love very well.

But the point of a sacrifice was supposed to be to achieve something greater, not to lose something as precious as Angie for no damn reason. And that thought rattled around Peggy’s brain for the rest of the day and well into a night of broken sleep.

~~~~

Peggy was awoken in the early afternoon, by a light but insistent knocking at her door. She blearily rubbed the sleep from her eyes, forgoing her slippers as she padded to the door. She peered through the peephole, leant back, then peered through it again. She didn’t believe her eyes.

Without a second thought, she swung the door wide open.

“Hi English.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is technically the last chapter, the one after this is more of an epilogue.


	12. Post-credits scene

_1954_

“I need you to focus.” Fennhoff twisted his ring around his finger in a way that usually seemed to transfix the attention of his target. “You need to remember. Remember who you are. Remember Leviathan and all the things we want to accomplish, but now we will accomplish them with Hydra.” Dottie’s expression flickered for a moment. “Just focus.”

At the nurses’ station on the third floor of the hospital, one nurse looked through the window across the hall into Dottie’s room, while the other flipped through a patient’s chart.

“What do you think Patty, he her uncle?”

Patty looked up briefly and followed Nancy’s gaze into Dottie’s room. She liked Nancy, but she didn’t get to see her much as she was fairly new and they were usually on rotations in different wards and at different hospitals. “I don’t know about that. But something funny’s going on for sure,” she made a note of a room number on another piece of paper and closed the chart in front of her before looking around briefly for eavesdroppers; “I was here when some other guy dropped her off, it must’ve been two years ago now. He was some real polite fella speaking the Queen’s English all proper-like, said he didn’t know her but didn’t half seem wary even though she was unconscious. In a real rush to leave too, didn’t even leave a name for her beyond ‘Jane Doe’.” Patty gave her a look.

Nancy nodded thoughtfully and leant back, glancing into Dottie’s room again, “I guess that’s a little strange?”

“Oh it gets weirder. So this guy’s English right, so you would think, if she’s not America, maybe she’s from there too or something.” Nancy nodded. “Except when she wakes up, Dr Eikenberg’s there as I’m recording her vitals and the woman, she’s quiet as you like and starts saying something, except it sure don’t sound like English, and then the doc turns pale as a sheet. He served you see, and he learnt all sorts while he was in Europe, including what Russian sounds like.”

Nancy looked at her, bug-eyed. “You’re kidding.”

“Not even a little bit.” Patty shrugged, “now the doc can recognise the language, right. But he doesn’t speak a word of it. So he calls in one of the other nurses, who knows a little bit of Russian from the war, and it turns out our mystery patient here doesn’t know who she is or anything else. Nothing up here,” she tapped her temple.

Nancy abandoned any attempt at being discreet and fully stared between Patty and the mystery woman.

“So you’ve got a woman with no clue who she is, speaking Russian, being dropped off by a real well-dressed English fella, and a week later being visited by a series of men who all claim to be related to her in some way; though they all stopped at some point, until he started coming along every week.” She nodded towards the man sitting at Jane Doe’s bedside. “So whether he’s her uncle or not, I hope someone’s looking out for her; it sounds like she needs it.”

Nancy gave a low whistle. “Talk about oddities. And here I thought Mr Johnson’s purple extremities were weird.”

Patty chuckled, “oh they still are. Just not the weirdest thing around here,” she winked.

Nancy grinned back then paused, “speaking of,” a quick glance at the clock on the wall told her that it’s time for her to start delivering evening medication, “almost time for the next round.” She bid Patty adieu and tucked her clipboard back into it’s place on the desk under the counter, her thoughts already elsewhere; she’d have to remember to pick up some extra puddings on the way, to help convince the younger patients to take their medicine. With one last glance she saw the mystery patient saying something to her ‘uncle’, and staring intently at his hand, then she turned the corner and carried on towards the rooms with the medicine cabinets. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I left it open, in case inspiration/motivation hits for a sequel. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!


End file.
